


Hugs Before Toast

by hogwartsjaguar



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Multi, rommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 52,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4088707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hogwartsjaguar/pseuds/hogwartsjaguar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Enjolras first walks into his dorm room, he is met with the sight of a naked man in his dorm room, the problem is that Enjolras requested to have a single room. Now Enjolras must cope with having a roommate who is called Grantaire, who has the habit of changing the TV contrast settings and fiddling around with the toaster or Enjolras is positive that he is going to go mad before the year is out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hugs Before Toast

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Les Miserables ReverseBang 2015 for the lovely Plgeons:( http //p1geons.tumblr.com/) who drew a lovely picture (http://p1geons.tumblr.com/image/120884253460\\) that I wrote this story on. Just to appologise if it isn't the best story out there as I have spent so much time on it, that my eyes feel as if they havn't closed in ten years with the amount of staring at a screen I have done. Thank you for reading.

September

Within the first ten minutes of starting the new school term and stepping into his dorm room that was just outside the school , that at the age of thirteen he had decided that was going to be his dream school , Enjolras had decided that he had made a wrong decision. As Enjolras walked into his dorm room, packed like a donkey with all of his bags, he walked through the door and he found out that the main room resembled a pig sty that had not only been tormented with not only a hurricane but a tsunami as well, as there was clothes in every possible location, and on the two tables there was a small mountain of clothes and other rubbish on each of them. A desk had been knocked over and there was a cup of mysterious pink liquid that was dripping on the floor into an increasingly large pink puddle, that could either be blood that was rather funny coloured or it belonged someone with a rare and undiscovered disease or it was either strawberry milkshake. 

However this wasn’t the problem as Enjolras could cope with the mess, as messes soon could be cleaned up and with a good few hours the room could be clean again. The problem was that there was a naked man in his room, standing with a sandwich that was leaking cheese onto the floor that was only adding to the mess that seemed to be growing by the second. Enjolras looked up at the man and he stared at the man’s eyes in the attempt to prevent them from drifting downwards as when someone is naked, and that someone is a man, you somehow always look at their penis. Enjolras doesn’t understand why people do that, maybe there was a magnetic pull that forced someone to look down there, an animal instinct of some sort to see who would be the alpha male. 

The thing that made Enjolras the most uncomfortable, wasn’t the fact that the room was a mess, or that there was a naked man in his room, but it was the fact that the man seemed to actually be rather comfortable being naked in the presence of another, and he lifted up a hand as a greeting when Enjolras walked in to the room and stared at him with his jaw on the ground with his shoes. 

“Wrong room!” Enjolras squealed as he covered his eyes with one hand and with the other he picked up his bag and left the room as fast he could without bumping into the door frame too many times. Once he had slammed the door behind him, Enjolras threw his bags on the floor and lent against the wall and started to rub the sore spot that he had on his hip that he got from the door handle from when he tried to make a hasty exit. Enjolras tried to think about what was happening, but his brain had turned to mush and it was running slow like a virus filled Windows product that had just gone into the blue screen of death and it was still trying to reboot. 

When he had eventually had been given the gift of having his thoughts back, they were running slow and the software that his brain was using, was now Windows Vista with Internet Explorer on to boot. Enjolras dove into his pocket of his red jacket and pulled out the napkin that had the number of his room scrawled on it. It took Enjolras a few moments to find the napkin as it had travelled into the inside lining of his jacket through a hole that hadn’t been sewn up properly. Enjolras could have gotten himself a new jacket, but he loved his red coat that was exclusively worn for the occasions where he felt he needed a bit more luck, such as when he went out to get signatures for a petition or if he was wanting France to win the world cup, and since today was a rather momentous occasion in Enjolras’s life, he felt that he could use a little red jacket karma to help him on his way. However the jacket seemed to have lost its magic or Enjolras had done something rather pure evil that caused Karma to place a naked man into his dorm room. 

Enjolras looked at the napkin in his hand and back at the door and repeated the action several times, just to make sure that the numbers on the napkin hadn’t suddenly merged into a new set of numbers in front of his eyes. The napkin had the numbers of 302 scrawled into them and the door had the same numbers on it. Enjolras must have gotten the wrong numbers as room 302 couldn’t possibly be his , as he was rather adamant to the office staff and the school that he would be having a single room, he was rather persistent and made the boy in the office cry as he made his demand for having a single room rather clear. Sure Enjolras felt a bit bad for making him cry, but at the same time he didn’t really care as having a roommate was his own personal form of hell, as he would have to put up with the issues of loud music, unwashed dishes and the roommate having sex on the shared sofa or even them just walking around naked. And it was for his own sanity and everyone else’s sanity who lived in the same apartment block as him, so having a single room was a win, win situation for him and his potential neighbours. He gets a room by himself where he doesn’t spend the year going insane, the neighbours get to keep their hearing as they are not subjected to their neighbour shouting at his roommate all the time. 

As Enjolras was about to load all of his bags onto himself so that he could waddle like a father penguin looking after his egg, down into the offices to complain about his room situation, the naked man appeared at the door, however he was wearing a green tartan bathrobe. Enjolras would have made some complaint about the guy being basically naked again, but he thought that the bathrobe was better than him wearing no clothes again as there was some coverage and if the guy didn’t do a Marilyn Monroe impression over an air great, Enjolras would be as happy as he could be in this situation.  
The man lent against the door frame and looked at Enjolras with a smirk appearing on the corners of his mouth, as he took a bite out of his sandwich instead of actually offering to help with the bags or doing anything productive with the time, there are 5,25,600 minutes in the year and the man wasn’t using them to any great use and it was just a pity on human life, where a man would rather eat a sandwich instead of helping his fellow citizen with anything, it was clear that society was going downhill. Enjolras shot the man his best glare, and the man held up his hands defensively. 

“You know that you should knock before you go into a room, someone might be naked.” The man said, barking out a rough laugh at his own joke. 

“Oh , just piss off.” Enjolras growled as he picked up his last bag and threw it on his shoulder, he turned around on heel and started to make his way back to the administrative office before the man could say anything else to him. Clearly this was the ultimate sign of the worst that could possibly happen to him and the only way to solve it would be bugging Combeferre to make him a chocolate cake with extra icing so that he could eat it with a spoon and complain about the injustice of the world to him and Courfeyrac, as they would know what to do, and they could pat his head sympathetically and tell him that everything would be okay, that is all he really needed right now and lots of extra icing.  
**

“That is not my room.” Enjolras repeated to the office boy for the seventeenth time in the past half hour. “What part of it do you not understand?” He asked the office boy who looked as if he was about to burst into tears at any moment and ruin the stupid looking tie that had a pattern of llamas covering a bright green background with his tears warping the colours and drenching the llamas on his tie. It wouldn’t be the first time that the office boy had cried when he was in the face of Enjolras, and if Enjolras wasn’t getting his way, he would make sure that it wouldn’t be the last time the office boy shed some tears.

“I...I told you, Mr Enjolras, your room is three hundred and two.” the boy stammers repeating the words that had become a bit of a catch phrase to him as he had to repeated the same sentence over and over again. Enjolras briefly wondered how much the minumum wage was as maybe all the crap that he was loading onto the office boy wasn’t worth minimum wage. 

“Well it can’t be my room,” Enjolras says with a sigh. “Because there was a naked man in it and I especially made sure that I was having a single room. Do you understand what the word ‘single,’ means? I can use it in a sentence if required.”

“That will not be necessary.” The boy says as he wheeled himself to the back of the room on his desk chair and spun around on it several times as he reached for some files from the filing cabinet. Enjolras could tell that the idiot that dealing with him was a bit of an idiot as he looked as if he enjoyed spinning on the chair and he made the effort to do so, when he could just walk. With a triumphant noise the office boy pulled out the desired file and launched it onto the desk with a loud bang. “These are all the rooms that were assigned this year.”

As the office boy was starting to go through the file, humming to himself happily as he was doing so, Enjolras thought that he recognised the boy. He wasn’t too sure what made him think that he knew him, but it could have been due to the fact that he was wearing one of the most hideous ties that Enjolras had ever seen in his life time or how the boy screamed the words ‘nerd,’ and ‘dork,’ without even having to even try. And the only person who seem to be able to do that as effortlessly as the office boy was the boy who stayed with Courfeyrac in high school after his grandfather kicked him out for some reason that Enjolras couldn’t remember. He could only remember the boy, mostly as he was mostly rather annoying and he tried desperately to be liked by him and Courfeyrac, and the fact that for his finial history and language project, he combined both subjects together and made a play written in German about the battle of Waterloo. Enjolras couldn’t even remember the boy’s name, but he knew it was something that started with ‘M.’ Marco? Maurice? Mario? 

“Look Marco,” Enjolras says with another sigh, as he decided that maybe he should try playing nice to see if that got him any further. “All I am asking you to do, is to tell me what room I am meant to be in.”

The boy closed the file and looked up at Enjolras with a confused look. “First of all, my name is not Marco, second of all like the other times that I have told you; your room is three hundred and two. It is written down in three files and two documents on the computer. And finally; we were in high school together less than five months ago and you don’t even know my name?”

“Are you sure about the room?” Enjolras asks as he dove into one of his bags and pulled out his wallet and gave the boy a note. “I won’t tell anyone if you shift some things about, Maurice, it can be our little secret.” 

“Do you honestly think that money is going to work?” The boy asks with a sigh, but when Enjolras looked away he put the money in his desk drawer. “I can’t change anything on these records and if you want it changed you can go to Javert, but I wouldn’t do that I were you. He is in a bit of a bad mood today. And my name is not Maurice.”  
“Are you just doing this because I didn’t come to your birthday party?” Enjolras asks.

“That is right Enjolras, this is me punishing you for not going to my party.” The boy says rolling his eyes with his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I am so upset with you not turning up even though the party was two years ago. You missed such a great party; there was ice cream cake and karaoke.”

“You sang Karaoke?” 

“You will never know.” The boy replies as he spun around on his chair once more and shoved the file back into the filing cabinet and closed with a kick that made a loud noise that echoed through the office. “I think that you should go and unpack Enjolras, and maybe you might remember my name. I was one of your best friend’s roommates, you should know about me at least.” As the boy turned around on his seat once more as he seemed to be enjoying spinning around on his chair, he looks over to Enjolras. “Fun fact, Karaoke means empty orchestra in Japanese.”

Enjolras didn’t know what the boy was going on about; he knew some things about the boy, so it wasn’t as if he was a complete and utter arsehole. He might not have known the boy’s name, but he knew lots of things about him from the stories that Courfeyrac had told him. Such as one when the boy got chased by a peacock and ended up getting stuck up a tree. Enjolras also knew the story of how the boy decided to confess his love for Cosette, one of the most popular girls at their school, by spray painting a love heart on her driveway with their names tougher. He also knows that after that happened. Cosette’s father wasn’t too happy with that and sent out his peacock to attack the boy.  
“Once last question Mario.” Enjolras said as he started to load up his bags onto himself again. “What happened to my single room then?” 

“There was a bit of a fire from someone’s science experiment. He had the room before you and he mixed some chemicals together and burnt the place down and he lost his hair from the chemicals.” The office boy said as he walked over to the door and held it open for Enjolras. Enjolras thanked the boy and made his way out of the room, wondering if he should have asked that question sooner than he did, as if he did he would have been out of the office a lot quicker than he did and he wouldn’t needed to have wasted his breath speaking to 

“And by the way Enjolras, my name is Marius.” The boy shouted down the hallway once Enjolras was half way down it.”

Enjolras made his way up back to his room with two thoughts in his head. He wondered about how much on a grudge someone can hold for not remembering their name and not going to their birthday party. Enjolras also wondered about how he was going to cope with a roommate, who he was rather unpleasant to with no good reason. Actually there was a good reason, as he was naked and he made a mess of the room, but matters aside was there a Hallmark card that said, ‘I am sorry that I was rude to you as I thought that you were an intruder in our apparently shared room?’ There probably wasn’t one, so instead of that Enjolras decided to think other ways he could say that he was sorry without having to resort to using a shop bought card that may or may not exist. In simpler terms, Enjolras was screwed. 

From years of experience and being friends with Courfeyrac, Enjolras had learned that the best way to get to a man heart or close enough to make him forgive you again was through his stomach. Enjolras thought that he might have gotten on the wrong foot with his roommate, but in his defence he didn’t know he had one and his roommate was naked, so it was a reasonable response for his behaviour of the situation. But as his roommate could make the rest of the year a living hell for him, Enjolras decided that he would hand over an olive branch and hopefully thinks would be reasonably okay, only if Enjolras was lucky enough. 

Before he went back into his room, Enjolras stopped by the local corner shop that was only ten minutes away, and he bought a random selection of food that was available in the shop, mostly as he had no idea what his roommate liked. Enjolras knew that he liked sandwiches and strawberry milkshakes, due to the fact that he saw his roommate with these items. He wasn’t too sure what else to buy or how much he should buy to make up for the fact that he was rather rude, but after shoving several items into his basket, that included; a cheese and chutney sandwich, a Snickers bar, a packet of processed cheese slices, strawberry jam, a jar of gherkins and a strawberry milkshake, Enjolras left the shop with another bag starting to dig into his sore side from when he walked into the door handle. 

When he got back into the dorms, Enjolras didn’t go back into the room straight away. Instead of that he hovered around by the door way, occasionally making the move to go into the room by placing his knuckles on the door, but they would soon be removed as soon as they were placed on the door as if the wood of the door was red hot and had burnt him as soon as he touched it. As Enjolras was osculating by the door, several people had made their way past the dorms, all of them loaded with several bags as they made their way to their rooms. Several of them looked at Enjolras with a mixture of looks between curiosity and pity, as they believed that he had been kicked to the doorstep as his roommate was having sex, and some even patted his shoulder and told him that he would find someone one day, and Enjolras didn’t even bother to shout at them for making assumptions as to be honest, he was a bit lost at the moment on what to do.

Enjolras reached over to touch the door once more, but he removed his hand again, and he started to build up a wall of courage by thinking about the worst that could happen if he went into the room. He could be banned from entering the room by his roommate and he would be forced to find refuge for the year somewhere else, and Enjolras didn’t know where else he could go, as he had a rather shockingly small address book of people who he could go to. He would either be shouted at and that was probably the most likely think that would happen and the rest of the year would be filled with uncomfortable silences and the occasional good morning from his roommate, to be honest, Enjolras could live with that as it meant that he didn’t need to participate in the social norms of having a roommate and he could use the time that was reserved for three in the morning conversations about nothing to get school and political work done, so really it wasn’t the worst thing that he could happen. 

Deciding that it would be now or never, and the fact that the hallway was starting to get rather chilly and Enjolras was worried about having his spine snapping in half with the weight of his bags and he didn’t want to spend the first day of classes in hospital. Enjolras decided that he would knock on the door and try and get inside. 

With a deep sigh, Enjolras closed his eyes flinched for the punch that may or may not happen when the door opened, as he knocked on the door several times. Within a few seconds the door opened and the man who was in the room before and was previously naked was fully dressed, with clothes that were covered in paint stains of different colours and sizes in all areas of the clothes and he looked as if he hadn’t run a comb though his hair for at least a week, with the dark curls on the top of his head that stuck out in every direction possible. The most noticeable thing that Enjolras could see about the man was the fact that he had ink that was on his face and his hands, staining the skin with blue.  
Enjolras took in a deep breath in the attempt to calm himshelf down, but it failed and he lost all calmness when he opened up his mouth to speak. “I’mreallysorrythatIwasanarsetoyouandIamyourroomateandIbrought food.”

The roommate just blinked and looked puzzled as he looked as if he was trying to distinguish what words he could make up from the rushed sentence that came out of Enjolras’s mouth. “Could you say that again, my understanding for gibberish is not brilliant.” He replied in an amused tone. Enjolras let out a sigh of relief as it meant that he wasn’t that deep in the pile of shit that he had created when he told his roommate to ‘piss off.’ 

“I am sorry that we didn’t get off on the right foot, and I am sorry that I was rather rude to you. I found out that we are roommates and I brought you food as a peace offering.” Enjolras said as he reached for the plastic bag with all of the food that he bought from the corner shop and he passed it to his roommate, who looked inside it with a look of amusement as he pulled out the packet of cheese slices.

“You know that most people just buy booze to make friends.” The man said as he opened up the door further and gestured for Enjolras to walk into the apartment, that was still a bit of a pig sty but it was considerably cleaner that it was before. “You don’t need to apologise for telling me to piss off, it happens all of the time and I am pretty much used to it. If you have a face like mine, you get used to comments like that all the time.”

Enjolras didn’t say anything for a few moments and looked at his roommate’s face, he didn’t know what his roommate was talking about, his roommate wasn’t ugly as you might say, but he wasn’t like a model. He just looked average, but his nose looked as if it had been broken several times and there was the faint scaring that was from acne from what must have been his younger years. But he wasn’t ugly, with his brown eyes, they weren’t like chocolate or hazel brown but the colour of mud. But in his eyes, Enjolras wouldn’t consider his roommate to be bad looking. 

“I know that you are wondering how I turned out so ugly.” His roommate said with an air of nonchalance to his voice. “This is what happens when you do boxing, it messes your face up. “

“Were you any good?” 

“I think that I was rather good, but it made my face the way it is, but you should see the other guy.” The roommate said with a chuckle to his voice that resembled a bark. 

Enjolras didn’t say anything for a few moments, mostly as he didn’t know what to say. Actually that was a lie as he had things that he was wanting to say, but he thought that it would be strange of him to apologise or to ask his roommate why he was naked and eating a sandwich. And Enjolras had just met the guy and it was probably too soon to ask questions about nudity when he didn’t even know the name of his roommate. Enjolras had sunk the ship of introductions when he told his roommate to piss off instead of ‘Hi, and your name might be?’ Perhaps asking for his roommate’s name would be a good idea and a starting point for a positive start of the year. 

“My name is-“ 

“Enjolr-ass.” His roommate said cutting him off, his voice sounding rather muffled due to the fact that he was eating the cheese and chutney sandwich that Enjolras had bought him. “Do your parent’s want you to go through a life of substitute teacher’s butchering your name and not having your name on a keychain?” 

 

“It is Enjolras.” Enjolras muttered with a sigh, due to the fact that he would have to go through the painful process of having to teach people how to say his name, once again. Enjolras knew that he was getting his hopes up when he thought that people might be able to say his name by some miracle or some force, after years of having people just looking at his name and calling him ‘Mr Enchallades,’ as apparently that was easier to say than Enjolras. But that hope soon came crashing down when the realisation that no one was ever going to pronounce his name right on the first go. It was a fact of life, such as pigs would never fly not unless they were on an aeroplane in first class, and Enjolras would need to learn to accept it or he was going to experience some serious Dukkha. “It is pronounced, ‘Ahn-Jahl-Rah’” Enjolras said pronouncing each syllable carefully, so that his roommate would understand, and as he did this, he considered getting a name tag that had his name written phonetically so that he didn’t need to go through the rather tedious routine on teaching people to say his name and to be honest it was rather annoying having to do it a minimum of five times a day. 

“Should I be writing this down?” The roommate said through a bite of sandwich as he started to go through the mountain of boxes in the search of a pen and something to write on. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, roommate seemed to give up his search and he sat back down on the beanbag that he was sitting on before and continued to eat his sandwich. “Do you have a nickname or something? Enjy? Apollo?”

“If you call me that again, I will rip out your balls.” Enjolras muttered as he removed his jacket and tried to find a suitable location to put it that wasn’t the floor or on an area that didn’t look rather suspicious with any strange looking stains on the floorboards.

“Oh aren’t you the charmer, I can see that the women have to cut off their hands to keep them off you.” His roommate said as stood up and went into the mini fridge and pulled out and pulled out a can of soda that was some generic store bought brand that probably tasted like a mixture of acid, chemicals and disappointment as it wasn’t actually real Pepsi. “Are you wanting one, Ahn-Jahl-Rah.” The roommate asks with a smirk on his lips as he makes the effort to drawl out each part of the name with a sense of laziness that only someone who was the queen bee in high school can manage. 

Deciding that he would like to have his taste buds remaining and not having them doused in the chemicals of a generic soda that could cause him to get a rare illness or attain superpowers, Enjolras refuses one. “There is one thing that I want to know.” Enjolras says as he throws his jacket on top of the television, “Do you mind telling me your name?” Enjolras asks in an attempt to change the subject as he is not fully comfortable about talking about women or any one in that fashion. He has little interest in people in general not unless they are interested in his political views or are just Combeferre, and Enjolras is fine with that. He can’t change the way he is, and he doesn’t see the point in suddenly being interested in someone for the sake of being normal. When he eats pizza, he doesn’t like cheese, so he doesn’t’ get it, while everyone else has cheese and there is no point in messing up a perfectly good pizza with cheese, just because everyone else likes cheese. 

“I am Grantaire, or you can call me Taire or R. And if you understand the joke, I congratulate you” The roommate or now Grantaire says, looking at Enjolras’s outstretched hand for a moment before high fiving it. “I can pronounce it for you in case that will be needed, but I doubt that you need my assistance.” 

“I think that I can manage on my own, if I can get into a politics course, I can certainly learn how to say your name.” Enjolras snorted at Grantaire’s offer.

“Well we weren’t all blessed with difficult names.” Grantaire sighed dramatically as he collapsed onto the beanbag chair, with a mock air of defeat about him as he placed his hand upon his heart. “First of all you tell me to piss off and then you tell me that my name is not difficult to say, oh how you wound me, Enjolras.”

“I am positive that you will get over it. Like the hit song from Frozen that has been bothering me for nearly two years, here is my advice, let it go.” Enjolras grumbled as he threw his bags on the floor for dramatic effect to show his dislike for Grantaire, he would slam a door as he went into his room, but unfortunately he couldn’t do that as the bedroom was a room with two beds on either side on it, so throwing his bags would have to do. 

“I can tell that we are going to get on swimmingly then.” Grantaire points out as he takes gulps a sip of his generic store bought nastiness and then somehow produces a loud burp that echoes through the dorm room, bouncing off the yellow painted brick walls in a rather impressive fashion. As Enjolras sighs about how disgusting his roommate is and wonders if he slips the office boy some more money, that he would be able to get him a new roommate at the least, someone who can’t burp the alphabet would be nice. 

“You look like the fussy type.” Grantaire points out, once he finishes his sandwich and he moves to the jar or jam that Enjolras bought for him and he pulls out a spoon from his pocket and starts to eat it straight out of the jar. Enjolras looks at him with a look of complete and utter despair as Grantaire shoves the first spoon in his mouth and manages to get jam down his shirt. The way that Grantaire eats, absolutely disgusts Enjolras, but for some reason, he cannot look away from it. You would think that Grantaire would be full from just eating two sandwiches, but he is not. It wouldn’t surprise Enjolras if he finds out that his roommate discovers that he has worms during the year. 

“What about it?” Enjolras asks

“Nothing, just pointing something out. Just wondering if you would be the guy who has a big roommate agreement or something. ”

“You know most people don’t tell others that they ‘look fussy,’ Enjolras mumbles as he stares at the wall that has a poster of some random man who looks as if he has one the genetics lottery with a fake smile that make him look like a Ken doll. What makes the man look as if he is more like a Ken doll is that he is on a pink motor bike, that makes it look as if Barbie has given him permission to drive to the mall on it, while she has a manicure getting done. The poster makes Enjolras roll his eyes when he looks at it, on the ridiculousness of it, however he would rather look at it, than Grantaire who is still eating. “Also when there roommate is speaking to them, they tend to stop eating.”  
However despite his best efforts to gauge Grantaire out of eating and to force him to at least look up from his food, he doesn’t stop.

“What is wrong with you? Do you have worms or something?” Enjolras exclaims as he checks his watch. “I have known you for less than an hour and all the time you have not stopped eating.”

This seems to grab Grantaire’s attention as he does look up from his food, and up at Enjolras for a brief moment. If Enjolras looks carefully, enough, he can swear that Grantaire’s eyes look sad for a brief second, but only in the light, as it goes away soon enough. Maybe he was a little cruel to Grantaire, but he was being honest. Besides, Enjolras was positive that he doesn’t look fussy. He looks like Enjolras. It would be something to ask his friends later on. 

“Are you wanting some?” Grantaire asks, gingerly shoving the jar in Enjolras’s direction as he pulls out another spoon from his pocket after a few moments of silence that only involves Grantaire playing with his spoon and Enjolras staring at Grantaire in disgust.. Enjolras takes the spoon, as a way to show that he has forgiven Grantaire for his nakedness, but makes no effort to eat the jam, claiming that he has allergies, when in reality, he doesn’t want to have the opportunity to catch something from Grantaire just by eating some jam. Plus they have just met and it would be a bit soon to be doing something this intimate, sharing a jar of jam together. If he was going to share a jar of jam with Grantaire, he would want Grantaire to buy him dinner first.

“I’m sorry for going off at you like that.” Enjolras says with a sigh as he throws the spoon into Grantaire’s direction. Grantaire manages to catch the spoon expertly in one hand and shoves it back into his pocket with a fluid motion. Grantaire still doesn’t say anything and he just moves his eyes to the jar of jam, not eating but instead he just stirs it around with his spoon. “It was wrong for me to do so. Everything has been crap for me recently and this day has been terrible and I was wrong for me to take it out on you. You can eat as much as you want; it is your apartment as well as mine. I don’t want to deny you of a human right, as I am for justice and all that.” 

Once he has finished speaking, Enjolras lets out another sigh. It was probably the most shit apology that he has ever given in his life, but it is probably the most heartfelt one that he has given. He is not good at apologies, he is not even good in the area of feelings. This is why he has Combeferre and Courfeyrac. Combeferre is his brain and he can do the functions for him, such as doing long division and apologising for him, while Courfeyrac is his heart and he deals with all of the emotional stuff for him, as Enjolras is positive that he has the emotional range of a really small teaspoon, as he is part robot and ice man. It was a shame that Combeferre and Courfeyrac weren’t here as the two of them together could create the best apology that could ever exist, and Enjolras is positive that without them, he would end up just being alone, and that is rather fighting possibility that could actually happen any day. As to be honest, who would want to be friends with a robot, other than the gang from Star Wars?

“It is fine.” Grantaire states as he places a smile on his face that might not be real in the slightest. “What kind of stuff that has been causing you problems?” He asks, seeming to forget about what happened only a few moments ago.

“Just family stuff.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

“Not really.” Enjolras says as he draws himself in and folds his arms over his knees, being in the beanbag helps him go into a smaller ball, but Enjolras knows that being in a bean bag isn’t going to be good on his back and he is going to pay for it later on. But he really couldn’t care. He takes in a deep breath and another and he prays that Grantaire just changes the subject and doesn’t make him, ‘Evaluate his emotional state,’ which Combeferre has gotten rather fond of doing so lately, Enjolras is at the point that he wouldn’t be surprised if Combeferre attaches wires to him and asks him questions about ink blots. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to burden all of his crap on Grantaire, who he has just met and he has just been a complete and utter arse to in the short time that they have been together. Enjolras likes to keep his life private and he doesn’t exactly want to put his whole life on the table for everyone to see and to judge. He doesn’t do it for anyone else , and he doesn’t expect or have the desire for anyone else to do it to his life.  
Grantaire leans forward and places a hand on his shoulder and gives it a firm squeeze and looks at Enjolras and gives him a small smile. From this small action, he can tell that Grantaire is trying to say, ‘If you need to talk, I can and I will listen to you.’ Enjolras nods at Grantaire, mostly as he doesn’t know what to say. But Enjolras doesn’t think that he will take Grantaire up on his silent offer, but he appreciates the sentiment neither the less. 

“Have you met any of the neighbours yet?” Grantaire asks after a few moments, Enjolras supposes that it is an attempt to brighten up his mood.

Before Enjolras can take him up on his question, there is a knocking on the door and soon two voices echo through the wooden door, both shouting Grantaire’s name, as if they have been waiting outside the door for this que go make themselves known. Before Enjolras can even make his way out of the bean bag to open the door, the door bursts open to reveal two boys who are laughing hysterically upon entrance and they both go over to Grantaire and perform a complex handshake that involves finger snapping, jumping up and down and for some reason some Beyoncé dance moves. Once they get through the routine they hug each other as if they haven’t seen each other in several years, and it makes Enjolras feel like the fourth wheel that shouldn’t be there. 

Grantaire manages to pull himself away from the two boys and when he speaks, he shouts a bit, just so he can get heard over the two of them. “Enjolras, these are two idiots who managed to get my arse through high school and hopefully they will do the same for university. They have managed to get me through my first year, let’s hope they can do it through the rest of the time here. ” This results in the three boys laughing hysterically, one of them, the smaller boy has tears in his eyes and he is clinging onto Grantaire’s shoulder and his cane as if they are the only things from keeping him from floating off the floor, with his knuckles turning white.

“Enjolras, this is Joly.” Grantaire says as he points to the boy with the cane. The first thing that Enjolras notices about him is that from underneath his shorts, he has a fake leg with dinosaur stickers on it, but Enjolras doesn’t pay much attention to that as he has a bright pair of yellow shoes with hot rod flames on them to make them look cooler, Enjolras wonders. He is wearing a buttoned shirt that is covered in cats and Enjolras notices that he is wearing a horrendous pair of socks that are covered in lady bugs with umbrellas that are in different neon colours. He is the shortest out of the two, but he has the loudest laugh out of all of them and for some reason he is wearing a scarf and a cardigan, despite the fact that it is still summer. Joly stops laughing for a moment, looks at Enjolras and gives him a small wave before he continue to laugh at something that the other boy has said to Grantaire, probably an inside joke that was told years ago. 

The other boy steps forward from the group and the first thing that Enjolras notices is that the boy is bald, underneath the fedora that he is wearing . Enjolras is not too sure that the boy being bald is a fashion choice or that something has caused it. He is the tallest one out of the three of them and well-built with the shoulders of a rugby player. The other thing that Enjolras notices is that the boy’s clothes are covered in stains and there is a hole in his jacket. That looks as if he has caught the sleeve on something sticking out as he brushed passed it. 

“My name is Lesgle, but I tend to get called Bossuet a lot.” Bossuet says as he removes his hat and points to his bald head as if it is an explanation for his nickname. Clearly it was meant to be a funny nickname, as it sends Grantaire and Joly into fits of laughter once Bossuet says it. Maybe it was a in joke of some sorts or that would have to be something for Enjolras to Google once he unpacked. 

Enjolras doesn’t say anything, but he thinks that he must have a confused expression on his face, as Bossuet replaces the hat back on his head and places a hand on Enjolras’s shoulder. “It is fine if you don’t get the joke, many people don’t. Grantaire thought that he would be kind enough to give me a nickname after an old guy.” Bossuet shakes his head and lets out a chuckle in Grantaire’s direction. “It is certainly better than being called Mr Clean or Charles Xavier all the time.”

“Well it is nice to meet you.” Enjolras says to both Joly and Bossuet, with a nod in each of their directions. He decides that Joly and Bossuet are rather nice, but they tend to be rather loud, especially Joly, who has the most contagious laugh in the room and he even manages to bring a laugh out of everyone, even from him and that is a rather high achievement. He learns that Joly is studying medicine and is wanting to become a prosthetist , even though he has just met Joly, Enjolras can already tell that Joly will be liked by his patients, as he has the charm and the ability to get liked by everyone as soon as he opens up his mouth. He finds it easy to talk to Joly and he doesn’t feel that he really needs to try to do so, and conversation flows between them, and it somehow manages to push the thoughts of how horrid his day has been out of his head. He notices that Joly will often whisper things to Grantaire and hobble about on his stick to look at the cupboards and Grantaire’s things, as if he is looking for something. Enjolras doesn’t know what it is he is looking for, as Joly doesn’t say. But under his breath Joly keeps muttering about Grantaire not having a proper diet.

Talking to Bossuet is completely different to talking to Joly. While Joly is out going and is the light of the room, Bossuet is quieter and more reserved, but when he doesn’t speak, he is laughing and he always have a smile on his face. Enjolras is happy to find out that Bossuet is studying law, as it means that he can have someone to debate with if the time comes. He also learns that Bossuet has changed his area of learning and subjects, several times in his time in university and has had dreadful luck with them all, but law seems to be the best subject for him and it is the class that he is doing the best with. Bossuet is a few years older and he is going to be leaving at the end of the year in the hopes that he can get a job in a law firm. He discovers that Bossuet seems to have bad luck with quite a lot of things. Bossuet never tells any of these stories, Grantaire and Joly do instead and Bossuet only goes red and just laughs at them; however he refuses to even let Joly mention the story about the evil chicken, as apparently that one is far too embarrassing.  
Grantaire doesn’t say much about himself during the time that Bossuet and Joly are in their apartment, however from the odd comment that he heard from Joly, he finds out that Grantaire is also rather athletic as well as a boxer he is a gymnast and he occasionally fences. Enjolras be lives that the reason that Grantiare doesn’t say much about himself, if that Joly and Bossuet already know everything there is to know about Grantaire, and Grantaire doesn’t see the point in retelling new information, when two thirds of the people he is with already knows him. 

Joly and Bossuet soon leave, but as Joly heads out the door he stops and bangs his cane against the door to grab Grantaire’s attention as Grantaire switches on his music player, plugs himself in and he starts reading a music magazine the moment that his friends stand up and make their way to the door. 

“What is it Joly?” Grantaire asks as he removes his ear phone, with the music still playing , the music is too loud and from the noise he can hear, Enjolras can make out the lyrics to one of the songs from the wicked soundtrack. “I was trying to get inspired and you are preventing me from doing so.”

“I was going to invite you to soup and board game night tomorrow, as it is Monday and I want to keep up the tradition from high school.” Joly says as he leans against the door frame with an air of non-chalice. “ But if you don’t want to go, that is fine. I just don’t want you to starve and Bossuet has brought Hungry, Hungry Hippos with him this year.” Joly says as he shoots a smile towards Bossuet.

“You guys are like one of those couples that have been married for twenty years and the honeymoon magic hasn’t worn off yet.” Grantaire says as he rolls his eyes at his friends.  
“Well you are only jealous.” Bossuet says as he pokes his head though the door. “I am positive that Joly and I won’t ever have a friendship break up or a proper one. We are simply too cool to have one.” 

Joly swats Bossuet’s shoulder and tells him to shut up, but Joly’s cheeks have gone red and Bossuet is chuckling as he gives a final wave and he goes into his apartment. Grantaire only rolls his eyes at the behaviour of his two friends, but he doesn’t say anything, but Enjolras can tell with the way that Grantaire keeps opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish that he really wants to say something, but he is too polite to say anything. 

“So are you wanting to come or not?” Joly asks after a few moments once he manages to get the colour of his cheeks to turn to a more normal and natural shade. However Joly’s ears are still pink, even after a few moments.

“Fine.” Grantaire sighs as if he is being forced to climb up Mordor with the ring by himself. He closes his magazine and he looks at Joly with the equivalent of puppy dog eyes that are in the human form. “But it better be tomato soup you make.” 

“What else would it be Taire?” Joly says as he walks to bean bag that Grantaire is on and ruffles Grantaire’s hair, even though it makes no difference to Grantiare’s hair as it looks like a bird’s nest already. Grantaire lets Joly do it for a maximum of two seconds before he grabs Joly and starts to tickle him. Joly’s laughter echoes through the apartment as the two of them play fight. Enjolras watches for a brief moment, before he looks away as he just feels that he is being a spare part and he is almost intruding on the two them. He looks at his bag and he starts to pull out his jumpers to refold them the right way, so he can put them in the dresser, in the attempt to look busy. 

Once he has gotten to folding the fifth jumper the correct way and into his drawer, Grantaire and Joly stop fighting. Grantaire’s hair looks five sizes bigger than it should be and Joly’s cat shirt looks as if could do with a good iron. He looks at the two of them, and as if they are identical twins, Joly and Grantaire point at each other and say in unison. “He started it.”

“I should be going.” Joly says as he stands up, moving slowly as he holds onto Grantare’s arm as he does so. Wobbling once he actually gets to his feet. Grantaire doesn’t say anything but he lets Joly hold on to him for as much as he needs to until he gets his balance. Enjolras picks up Joly’s cane that has somehow managed to get to the other side of the room and it is lying on the chair Grantiare has claimed for himself, and he hands it to Joly, who thanks him once he gets the cane. “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow R.” Joly says with a large smile on his face. Just as Joly leave the room once more, he goes back inside for a brief moment. Enjolras lets out a sigh but he keeps it hidden as he thinks about how Joly and Bossuet never seem to leave the apartment. “Enjolras you can come along if you want, the more the merrier and maybe you can beat Grantaire at Hungry Hippos.” 

“Do you need help with the stairs?” Grantaire asks as Joly is about to leave the apartment. 

“I think that I will be fine.” Joly says with a shake of his hand. “ I will need to get used to getting up and down these ones anyway. I got a new leg not too long ago and I will need to practice on it, plus the elevator smells of urine and I don’t want to get ill from stepping in pee.” 

“If you are sure.” 

“Grantaire, I have managed to tutor you in maths, I am positive that I can make it up the stairs by myself.” Joly says with his voice having a bit of an edge to it. “I should and help make dinner. Try and not scare your roommate too much.” The smile goes back onto Joly’s face as gives a final wave and leaves the apartment and doesn’t come back this time.  
“They seem nice.” Enjolras points out once Grantaire sits himself back down on his bean bag. Enjolras doesn’t sit down and he continues to fold his jumpers and put them into his drawer one by one. He is only on jumper number six and he has another ten jumpers to do before he can finish and move on to his shirts. 

“They the best people that you will ever meet.” Grantaire says fondly as he picks up his magazine that he was reading before. “They have the ability to make anyone laugh, even when there day has been very shitty. Speaking from experience.” 

“Are you fine with me coming around to their soup night?” Enjolras asks as he puts the jumper that he was folding into the drawer. He turns around to face Grantaire and looks at him before he speaks. “ I don’t want to intrude on you and your friends. And I shouldn’t be the one to do so, I have been horrible today.”

“Joly said that you are invited and I recommend that you go because he will whack you with his stick if you don’t.” Grantaire says, with a bark of a laugh. “He is making extra soup and everything. Besides it some other people who will be there as well. It is going to be a block party, but there will be no drinking or anything. It is not Haram and Joly doesn't know about everyone's stance of alcohol and Joly is not really keen on drinking.” Grantaire says with his voice trailing off as if he forgotten the other half of his sentence. 

“If it is alright with you.” Enjolras says. “Joly was rather interesting to talk to and he said that he was going to show me an article about cats having physic powers.” 

“He is. And if you are going to apologise again for earlier on, just don’t.” Grantaire says as he has a bit of a tone to his voice as he picks up his magazine and holds it to his face. He doesn’t sound angry about it, but he sounds really fed up with Enjolras repeating the word sorry to him. “You have apologised enough for the whole year and I don’t think you will need to say sorry to me again.”

Enjolras only sighs but there is a smile on his face, as he knows that this might be the sure sign that he is going to get along with his roommate.  
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Enjolras wakes up the next morning and the first thing that he sees is Grantaire holding a booklet of some sort close to his face. Enjolras blinks several times in the attempt to wake himself up more, just so he can actually understand what is going on. He can’t tell if Grantaire is holding an eviction notice or an essay that he wants him to look over.  
Enjolras reaches over to the make shift bedroom table that is just a pile of books and pulls and shoves his glasses on his face to see more clearly, he grabs the booklet off Grantaire and he gratefully takes the cup of coffee that Grantaire passes him and takes a large sip form it in the attempt to wake himself up.

“What is this?” Enjolras asks once he has finished off his coffee. The booklet in his hand is rather thick and it is all hand written, in surprisingly neat handwriting. He looks over at Grantaire’s hands and sees that they are covered in black ink. There is smudges of ink underneath Grantaire’s eyes and on the bridge of his nose, that must have been caused when Grantaire was writing the book. Enjolras looks on the cover and the words Roommate Agreement are written in the front, in slanted handwriting that looks rather professional compared to the rest of the book, where the writing seems to change style and size throughout it. 

“I thought that you would like to have a set of rules, so we don’t bash heads.” Grantaire shrugs as he sits on the bottom of Enjolras’s’ bed with a cup of coffee clutched into his hands as if it is his life line. He takes a large sip of coffee, that is so strong that Enjolras can smell it. “I would like us to have a good time being roommates.”

Enjolras nods in reply and murmurs something along the same lines as what Grantaire says as he looks at the list of rules and agreement. The list included things like meal times, who does the shopping and just the general rules of things such as Grantaire’s routine, having friends around. However some of the rules made Enjolras raise his eyebrows a few times. Especially since there was a category of rules that came under nudity. Enjolras briefly wondered if his roommate wasn’t a university student, but he was a nudist. Not that nudist couldn’t go to university, but Enjolras wondered that it would be a bit cold sitting in the lecture halls for several hours without any clothes on.  
Some of the rules included:

Nudity: You have the right to get naked, but if you choose to do so, you must wait until the other roomie is out of the apartment and the doors and the curtains must be closed, as to keep ones dignity is a greater goal to keep in life rather than climb a window. While the other party is in the apartment, the minim clothing you can wear is boxer shorts or a dressing gown that is tied tightly closed. If the door is closed and you have been out of the apartment, please knock before you come in, as the person inside might be naked. Unless you are told that you can come in, please wait the sufficient time for someone to put on a pair of boxer shorts before you enter the room to avoid embarrassment for both parties. 

Painting:  
Because I am an art major, I will be required to bring some of my course work home to complete. I will be using Wednesday nights to get my art work done, and this will include a mixture of painting, drawing and making models out of various objects. If I am required to use other materials that could cause a smell or mess, I will let you know in advance. I will need to get my work done in the apartment with little distractions, and I ask the other party If they can spend time outside the apartment for at least several hours out of the apartment after classes, so that I can complete my work. I will be working mainly in the living area and the kitchen, so if you desire to spend time in the bedroom, you may as long as you keep music quiet and don’t bother me. Any other day of the week, I will happily leave the apartment for you to complete your work as long as I can have Wednesdays to do my work. I will clean up any messes that I make. 

Sunday is the time when Me and my friends will go and have breakfast in my apartment in the morning and we will be having an air band battle most weeks. Because you are a roommate of mine, you are permitted to join in and have breakfast with us. I will do the cooking, and if you can help clean up and be the base guitarist to the air band, you can be a part of the breakfast club. 

Enjolras only skimmed the rest of the booklet as it was mostly the boring things. The agreement that was given to him was rather reasonable and was slightly more normal than what he was expecting, even though the part about the air band and the part about nudity was eyebrow raising. But other than those parts, the agreement was fairly normal. To be honest, he had more strict rules with his parents when he stayed with them and Grantaire’s roommate agreement meant that he could have friends around and be able to get work done without being disturbed.

“So what do you think of it?” Grantaire asks as he fiddles with the loose hem that is on his jumper. “If you have any more rules, you can just put them in. Those are just for me, but you are open to putting more in if you want to.”

“I think that it is reasonable and I agree to it all.” Enjolras says as he skims the main terms and conditions of the roommate agreement once more, just to make sure he hadn’t missed out any small print. “The only thing that I can think about adding to it is if I have friends around, we tend to do political work. You are welcome to join us?” Enjolras asks, leaving his statement open so that Grantaire can jump and say that he has the desire or not to join. 

“I think that I might come in at a later time.” Grantaire says as he throws Enjolras a pen. “But what you do with your friends is your business and not mine.” Grantaire shrugs, failing to cover up his yawn as he waits for the booklet to get handed to him. 

Enjolras knows that when someone says that when they say ‘I might come in at a later time,’ actually means that someone is never going to come and they are just being polite as saying no can be a bit harsh. Enjolras only shrugs, maybe he can get Grantaire to sign a few petitions when the time comes. Besides he is in university now and he can pester all the people who go there to sign a few petitions when he needs to . 

“I think that I may go to bed.” Grantaire says as he stands up, swaying on his feet slightly as he takes the roommate agreement is signed . “I couldn’t sleep during the night and I thought that writing that would help me get to sleep. I was out with Bahorel last night and we had an incident with a tennis ball.” 

“I am planning to see some friends, so you don’t need to worry about me being too loud.” Enjolras says as he makes his way out of bed, deciding to ignore and not ask about a tennis ball incident, as to be honest, Grantaire looks as if he is not capable of human speech anymore. He looks at his alarm clock and he realises that it is only seven in the morning and it is earlier than he usually gets up, but he can just leave now and head over to Combeferre’s apartment in time for breakfast. It is only Saturday and Combeferre will be making bacon, as it is a very Combeferre thing to have breakfast plan for the week. It is beneficial to Enjolras, as he knows what days he should be going over to breakfast. Mondays he never go around to as that is when Combeferre has oatmeal and he hates it with a passion.

Before he leaves the apartment, and Enjolras looks at Grantaire who is about to head off to bed and he had already removed his shirt and thrown I onto the armchair. “Taire, I will make sure I knock before I come in, if the door is shut.” He calls over as Grantaire goes into his room.

Grantaire looks at him with a smile on his face. “Thank you for agreeing to the rules.” He says as he goes into his room.

Enjolras only shakes his head in almost amusement as he leaves the apartment, as he considers that maybe that having a roommate will be easier than he thought, and you just need to follow some rules to get along. Enjolras wondered why on television they made having a roommate something that you dreaded having, as so far, Enjolras was positive that he was doing rather well with one. 

 

“You must have smelt the bacon.” Combeferre groans as soon as he opens up the door, to reveal Enjolras who despite his rather short journey to the other side of the campus, has worked up a bit of a hunger. 

“Well hello to you too,” Enjolras replies as he goes underneath Combeferre’s outstretched arm that is holding the door open, before Combeferre can only say anything. It is only ten in the morning and Combeferre just looks as if he has just rolled out of his bed with his glasses askew on his face, hair messed up almost to Courfeyrac standards and he is still wearing his pyjamas, that are the rather embarrassing ones with rabbits on them that Combeferre’s grandmother bought for him one year for Christmas. Combeferre thinks that they are the most hideous things in the world and he only will wear them when the clothes that he has labelled as his ‘Ones that I am allowed to interact with members of society with,’ are all in the wash basket and Combeferre has to settle for his not so favourite items of clothing while he washes the rest of his clothes.  
“I do love the pyjamas.” Enjolras says as he throws himself on to the sofa. “I didn’t know that you liked rabbits though.”

“I bloody hate them,” Combeferre grumbles as he closes the door and plunks himself onto the sofa next to Enjolras, resting his head against the headrest. “Doesn’t help that I have allergies.”

 

“Is everything okay?” Enjolras asks as he looks over from the cartoon that was playing on the TV to Combeferre, who just looks tired and it is starting to worry Enjolras as he rarely sees Combeferre actually being less than cheerful. 

“Just tried.” Combeferre mutters as he tries his best to cover a yawn. But despite his best efforts in trying to hide it, it still comes out and it is comically high pitched and it sounds like Combeferre is trying to do his best impression of a cat. Even though Enjolras is slightly concerned about Combeferre, he can’t hide the laugh and the smirk that he produces, and it doesn’t stop when Combeferre does his best Combglare at him, as to be honest, it is difficult to take someone seriously once they have made a noise that resembles a cat that has inhaled some helium. 

“Did you get a new book?” Enjolras asks.

“Unfortuanly not.” Combeferre sighs, he stands up and makes sure that all the door in his apartment are locked before he places a hand over his mouth if he needs to hide what he needs to say. “It’s my roommate.” He says in a low voice.

“What is wrong with him?”

“All he ever does is sleep and eat, and he is just so loud.” Combeferre replies. “He had friends over last night and they broke the microwave.”

“How did they do that?”

“They had been drinking and they found a tennis ball and set it on fire and played, ‘Extreme Catch- fire edition.” Combeferre grumbled. “They asked me if I wanted to play after the tennis ball had smashed the microwave.”

“It can’t get much wor-“

Combeferre cuts him off sharply with a hand placed over his mouth. “Don’t you dare finish off that sentence. “ Combeferre snaps before he removes his hand and he sinks back onto the sofa looking rather defeated. “You are going to jinx it and they are going to set a bowling ball on fire and smash the TV. It is going to happen. I know it will.”  
Enjolras sat in silence for a few minutes and thanked to what force who was listening to him, let that be a god or batman, for giving him a roommate who just seemed to have an allergy to keeping their clothes on and had a tendency to make mess. But compared to Combeferre’s roommate, Grantaire was a blessing in disguise who even had the courtesy to make a roommate agreement. It was moments like these that Enjolras realised how terribly lucky that he was.

“How about I go and make us some breakfast, and then you can go to bed?” Enjolras asks giving Combeferre’s shoulder a squeeze. “As I think that you could use some sleep and some bacon.”

“Have I ever told you that you are a great friend?” Combeferre asks with a small smile on his face, that doesn’t last long as a yawn cuts through it. 

“I think that you must be tired if you are being this sentimental.” Enjolras chuckles as he makes his way into the kitchen, quickly locating the packet of bacon within the fridge that is littered with empty packets of food. This must be from the roommate, Enjolras thinks as he closes the fridge, actually struggling with it with the amount of empty packets that are crammed in there. Enjolras isn’t too sure if Combeferre only has one roommate, or he is living with a family of ten , as it seems impossible for someone to have eaten this much food in the time that they have been in the dorms. 

“Is that bacon?” Someone shouts as Enjolras puts the first pieces of bacon on the plate. Enjolras turns around and he is greeted with the shock of seeing a rather tall man who could easily be close enough to seven foot with dreads and a gold tooth standing right in front of him. What could be more intimidating about the man with dreadlocks was the fact that he was wearing a pair of footy pyjamas. He is looking tired and hangover, and Enjolras could notice a burn mark on his hand that must have been from the tennis ball that was on fire.  
Before Enjolras can answer or even put the last piece of meat on the plate that he was going to give to Combeferre, just so that he can get some sleep as soon as possible, the plate is snatched away from him and the bacon is gone instantly within a blink on an eye. 

“Enjolras, this is my roommate.” Combeferre sighs from the sofa, with forced politeness. “Bahorel, I take it that you slept pleasantly this morning.” Since he has been friends with Combeferre ever since they were in nappies, Enjolras can tell when Combeferre is wanting to say something that he knows that he shouldn’t say. Most of the time, Combeferre is rather blunt and he just says what is on his mind, and it is something that Enjolras does admire about his best friend. But when Combeferre wants to say something, but he knows that there will be a consequence to his words or he is in front of a wrong audience, he won’t say it but he wants to so desperately, he will make sure that he is being extra polite just so that the other person can’t tell how much they have pissed him off. Most people do believe that Combeferre is a pleasant and polite person, but the people who believe that, do not know him that well as if you know that Combeferre is a master of sass and snark underneath his glasses and politeness. Because he knows Combeferre the best, Enjolras gets to see the sass whenever he wants basically. Even when it is directed towards him, Enjolras still enjoys Combeferre being the master of snark, mostly as when he says a comment, it usually leaves everyone else in the room speeches as the most polite person that they know, secret identity is Captain sass underneath the disguise of Politely politerson. 

“Why is the microwave broken?” Bahorel asks through a mouthful of bacon. Enjolras has made the mistake of standing too close to Bahorel but he doesn’t realise it, until it is too late and Bahorel has sprayed bacon crumbs on his face. Bahorel goes over to the microwave and he looks at the shattered door and gives out a low whistle.  
“Do you seriously not remember?” Combeferre asks with a tone of confusion and one of wondering if his roommate is completely stupid, as he reaches underneath the sofa and pulls out a tennis ball that is almost completely black and he throws it into Bahorel’s direction. Bahorel manages to catch it in one hand, but as soon as the ball hits his hand it starts to designate and it forces a black cloud of soot to come out of it. 

“Judging by the fact that I am slightly hangover, I think that I must have been drinking last night.” Bahorel says quietly.

“You are rather clever you know that.” Combeferre said with his best glare that he could muster, but it had considerably less effect than it usually had. 

“Combeferre be nice.” Enjolras says as he passes over Combeferre his plate. “Eat this and go to bed.” Enjolras is suddenly taken back by the fact that he is the one who is nagging Combeferre to eat and sleep, as normally it is Combeferre’s role to do it for him. It almost scares him that it is possible for him to be domestic, as to be honest, he had never imagined to be a person who would care about an others wellbeing. Not that he doesn’t care about his friends and how they are doing, as it is a bit hypocritical for him to do so, especially when it is near exam times and he can’t really tell Courfeyrac to take a break and eat something, when he has resorted to eating instant coffee with a spoon to keep himself awake and he hasn’t showered in god knows when.

“Thank you I guess.” Bahorel says sounding slightly taken back. 

“Never mind him.” Enjolras says as he shoots Bahorel his best comforting look. “He is rarely this snappy, but I should warn you for exam times. I would advise you to stay out of your apartment as much as possible.” Enjolras says with a shudders as he remembers the times that he had stayed over at Combeferre’s house during their final exams during high school when his own parents were in Ireland. It was a slightly traumatic time for Enjolras as he had spent the time mostly in fear during each waking hour that Combeferre was awake for, mostly as the quiet and gentle giant that Combeferre was normally had completely hulked out during the exam period and he would frequently go mental and rage at even the slightest creak of a floor board or the consistent tapping of the apple tree branch against his bedroom window due to the high winds on the farm. Enjolras was rarely scared of anyone or anything and it was a quality that he took pride of, but he was scared shitless when Combeferre had threatened to shove the pencil that Enjolras was tapping up his nostril if he didn’t stop. Enjolras did immediately stop doing that as to be honest, death by pencil is not exactly a good way to die by. 

“But he looks so nice.” Bahorel whispered. “He wears jumpers and has the books and the glasses. He looks like a nerd, no offence to your friend.”

“It is the nice ones you have to look out for,” Enjolras replied. “Compared to me, he is the nice one.”

“Remind me not too piss you off too much then.” Bahorel says and then he continues to eat, avoiding any conversation that Enjolras tries to bring up shooting Enjolras’s attempts of conversation with monosyllabic answers . Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to bring up a conversation with someone who is more focused on eating bacon then having a human conversation. Enjolras doesn’t even make the attempt to speak to Combeferre, as he just wants his friend to get some sleep while he is willing to do so, as he knows that Combeferre is basically going to be attached to a IV drip of coffee for the rest of the year. 

Once Combeferre decides that he is going off to bed, Enjolras soon takes his leave, mostly as he thinks that is quite strange to stay in your best friend’s apartment and hang out with his roommate that he seems to dislike and who is more focused on eating bacon. It is probably in the rule book for times that you should leave someone’s apartment without being asked to leave or have been given the subtle hints that you should piss off, such as ‘I should get dinner on?’ ‘Is that the time already,’ or ‘I need to wash my hair,’ and those are just the nice simple ones. As he leaves Combeferre’s and Bahorel’s apartment, he gives them a final wave and calls goodbye that only results in two grunts coming from both residents from the apartment.

As he left, Enjolras decided that his goal for the year would to be to make some friends who had the tendency to speak in words of more than one syllable, as he would like to have some good conversations this year that didn’t require him to learn the language of grunts as he should be focusing on his studies. 

After walking around hopelessly around the campus having to idea what to do, as he didn’t really know anyone e and the people who he knew already plans. Well he could hang out with Courfeyrac but his dorky friend Marco would be there with him and Cosette, and Enjolras assumed that Marius was still a bit annoyed with him from the time in the office, judging by the way that when Maurice saw him in the campus, he said something to him in German that Enjolras was positive that it was the word for bastard. Maybe it was the sign that he should actually apologise and make the peace with him as he is positive that Courfeyrac would be on his ass if he didn’t even learn Malcom’s name. Enjolras had no clue what he should do, well he could open up his text books at start to study before even his classes had even started, but it was just sad even for someone who was rather studious. The only thing that Enjolras could think about doing was go back to his apartment and just watch cat videos on the internet as it was the most productive thing that he could think about doing.

Just as Enjolras walks into his apartment, he stops himself just as he is about to enter the appartment, remembering to follow the agreement and knock on the door.  
“It is fine dude, I’m not naked.” Grantaire’s voice comes from the other side of the door sounding slightly muffled. 

With a sigh of relief, Enjolras makes his way into the apartment and throws his bag onto the table, that is already been covered with a pile of books and art supplies, making sure to avoid the oil paints as he is positive that Grantaire is going to kill him if he throws his bag on top of them and spill them onto the table as they look rather expensive and Enjolras is positive that he is not going to be able afford them and he would rather be able to afford food for the rest of the year .

Grantaire is sitting on the sofa, well not unless you count sitting on a chair lying upside down on the sofa and making a mess out of the whole thing. He is eating a bowl of popcorn and he seems to be getting more popcorn on the ground than in his mouth. “Been doing much?” He asks. 

“Not really,” Enjolras shrugs as he sits on a beanbag chair. “Just went to see Combeferre and we ate some bacon. He told me how he had his microwave broken as his roommate threw a tennis ball at it last night.”

Grantaire sits up on the sofa and knocks the popcorn over. “I knew that game was a bad idea, Bahorel didn’t listen to me and look what happened. Is that guy with the glasses pissed?”

“You broke my best friend’s microwave.” Enjolras replies slowly. 

“Well it was Bahorel’s idea to play that game.” Grantaire replies putting his hands out toward him in defence. “There was no good cartoons on the TV and The Great British Bake Off wasn’t on.”

“Combeferre is going to have to go without microwave food until he gets a new microwave.” Enjolras replies. “You know how much a microwave is to a student?” Enjolras asks waving his hands about as if he is trying to swat away an imaginary swarm of flies. “It is everything to a student, as they don’t have the time to cook and he is a med student!”

“I’m sorry?” Grantaire says.

“Is that all you can say? My best friend is going have to go without having to eat microwave popcorn.”

“To be honest, I haven’t been in a situation like this before.” Grantaire shrugs. “I can invite him to Joy and Bossuet’s for soup and game night and I can apologise to him.”  
“Fine, but you are going to help buy him a microwave.” Enjolras sighs knowing that it is probably the best that he is going to get from Grantaire, and from just his overall impression of Bahorel, it is probably the best that he is going to get from him as well. “A new one, and not used.”

“Well don’t you want a lot .” Grantaire replies with a sneer. 

Enjolras gets up to his feet and folds his arms across his chest, glaring at Grantaire with as much furry that he can muster at once, without the use of a book like the Twilight series to ignite the fires of hatred that Enjolras has inside of him. “Well you played a game that involved a tennis ball on fire and damaged someone’s property who you don’t even know. I think that giving them a new microwave isn’t too much of a request.”

“Why are you getting so upset about it?” Grantaire exclaims. “It is not your microwave; it is one of your friends and I don’t think that you are going to go around to their apartment and regularly use their microwave.”

“It is because I am a good person.” Enjolras exclaims throwing his arms in the air. “I care about the people who are being oppressed in this world.”  
“So your friend is oppressed because he doesn’t have a microwave?” Grantaire asks slowly. “That is the most stupid thing that I have ever heard. You know Enjolras, buying someone a microwave isn’t going to stop someone being oppressed.”

“Well it is a start.” Enjolras sighs as he pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration, he counts to ten several times in the attempt to calm himself down, however it didn’t seem to work. Think of kittens, think of rainbows, think of happy thoughts. Enjolras mutters to himself, as counting to ten doesn’t seem to help him to calm down. “It is making the world a better place.”

“I do admire you optimism.” Grantaire barks. “But you know that the world doesn’t work like that, right?”

“Well maybe I should be the one to change it. It is a miracle what one person can do.” Enjolras barks back as starts to make his way into to his room.

“Well it takes one person to mess things up even more than they are already.” Grantaire barks as he makes his way into his own room. “The Monarchy messed up things, so did Napoleon and didn’t Robespierre?”

“Don’t you insult Robespierre!” Enjolras exclaims. “He was doing the best for France.”

“No he wasn’t, not unless you think getting people guillotined for the sake of it is the best r changing the whole bloody calendar.” Grantaire replies.

“You are a right bastard, if I had the power to travel back in time, I would take you to Robespierre myself and get you executed.” Enjolras growls. 

“Aren’t you the charmer?” Grantaire hisses. “You might even be more of one, if you remove that great bloody stick up your arse. You are so uptight that you can turn coal into diamonds with your arse.”

“I heard some shouting,” Joly’s panicked voice comes through the door. He opens up the door without asking for permission and he walks into the room and he looks at Enjolras and Grantaire with a look of shock a the two of them, who are both starting at each other with clenched fists and bared teeth. The two of them slam their doors closed before Joly can ask about what is going on.

Joly stands there for a few moments, not knowing what to do or what to say. “Hey guys, do you want to see me take off my leg?”

**  
Grantaire did not sign up for things like this to happen. Well technically he did when he applied for a shared room and scrawled his signature on a bunch of papers without even looking at the small print, so the part about having a roommate who hates your guts is probably in the fine print, probably next to the section about having an argument with the most beautiful person over a microwave and Robespierre. Well the point is that, when he signed up for having a shared room, he was expecting that having a shared apartment would help him afford to pay for things such as bills and for someone who would be able to actually tolerate him and hang out with him as his friends had hooked up together in the summer, after spending the last four years of dancing around each other and clearly not flirting each other, and now they were in the honeymoon period where they can’t kept their hands off another. It is not that Grantaire minds his friends being together, in fact that he is rather happy for them as it is the happiest that Joly has been in a while, but he wants to get some sleep during the year and from the experience of crashing with Joly and Bossuet during the start of their relationship, he had discovered that Joly and Bossuet are very loud and a prosthetic leg getting thrown at a wall in a moment of passion, makes a rather loud noise and it shakes the pictures off the walls. 

But the one thing that he didn’t expect when he signed up for a roommate was that he would have a roommate who was like Enjolras. He had signed up for a roommate who would be like him and he would be able to play computer games with and have stupid philosophical conversations with them at three in the morning. But Enjolras is not like that. Grantaire doesn’t understand how one minute Enjolras seems to be alright but the next moment it is like Enjolras has a bloody great big stick up his arse. It is really annoying is that Enjolras is so beautiful and he looks like someone who would be the main protagonist of a romantic comedy just from looks alone, but in reality Enjolras is an ex that you would be happy to see the back end of, and the fact that he got upset over a microwave, just makes him even stranger. To Grantaire, a microwave is something stupid to get upset over. To Grantaire there are only three things that you should get upset about: when you get your ass kicked in a boxing match, when you eat all of your popcorn before the movie starts and you have to be hungry for the rest of the film and when the couple that you want to be together doesn’t happen and they end up with someone you hate. Getting upset over a microwave is just idiotic. 

It is not that Grantaire is sulking from his fight with Enjolras, it is just that he is avoiding him. He only seems to be able to piss of Enjolras just from doing the smallest things, like giving his views about how the world isn’t going to change if someone gets a new microwave or not, or even just eating. It is the sign that he isn’t going to spend the rest of the year in terror and he thought that his first year was bad enough when he had that dreadful case of food poisoning from Bahorel having his home barbeque and Joly’s science experiment that made Bossuet lose all of his year and destroyed their apartment . Maybe if he gets a bunch of tined food and he organises his teachers to Skype his classes, he would never have to leave his room ever again and he could avoid Enjolras and it would be a win win situation. Enjolras could just pretend that he didn’t have a roommate and he wouldn’t have to look at someone who rips out his heart when he makes eye contact with him. The issue of the bathroom was starting to crop up, so Grantaire decided that he would need to look at home furnishing magazines for ideas about installing a bathroom in his room.  
Grantaire’s phone buzzes loudly, blaring out the ridiculous ring tone that he had installed for Joly, that is so annoying, but he keeps it anyway as Joly insisted that it was the ring tone that summed up his personality and a default ringtone wasn’t going to do that. . Grantaire swears loudly as starts to dig through the piles of clothes and other rubbish that are on the floor, looking for his phone. 

“Wassap?” Grantaire says as he finds his phone in one of his old shoes and flips it open. 

“Is everything okay with you and Enjolras?” Joly asks, just jumping straight to the point as Joly doesn’t dilly dally when he is on the phone. 

“Yeah, we are good man.” Grantaire replies as he flops back on his bed.

“Really?” Joly asks, from years of knowing Joly, he can tell that Joly is raising his eyebrow at him, as that it Joly’s questioning look that he uses when he doesn’t believe that someone isn’t telling the truth. “I heard shouting and when I had come in to check if everything is okay, the two of you were slamming doors.”

“Yes, because a slamming door is the perfect sign that something is fine.” Grantaire replies. “I don’t think that Enjolras likes me that much.”

“He can’t dislike you already. You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?” Joly asks. 

Grantaire lets out a loud sigh into the room. “I might have, he got upset over a microwave.”

“Are you wanting to sleep over at ours tonight?” Joly asks. “I think that you are needing to talk about this in person and not over the phone.”

“I will be down in a second.” Grantaire replies, hanging up the phone as he rummages through his crap once more and he shoves a change of clothes and a blanket and a pillow in his bag. He shoves his shoes onto his feet, and he opens up the door checking the coast if Enjolras is there. Enjolras still seems to be into his bedroom and he can hear the loud music of a political rap coming from Enjolras’s room. How dorkey the guy can get? 

As he opens up the door, the door hits something and spills something on the ground. Grantaire looks down and he sees a mug that is on the ground and there is a puddle of tea forming on the ground. Grantaire couldn’t remember making tea, and he is pretty sure that there isn’t a tea making ghost in his apartment as it wasn’t mentioned in the welcome booklet. The welcome booklet mentioned about checking for mould in the bathroom, but there wasn’t anything about ghosts. But then again Grantaire only skimmed it, so he could have missed about the part about the apartment ghost. Maybe it was from Enjolras, a peace offering of some sort? Grantaire now feels bad; he didn’t feel bad about shouting about a microwave before but now guilt piles onto him heavily. Enjolras has taken the liberty of making him a cup of tea that Grantaire has let it gone cold and now it is on the floor. 

He quickly cleans up the mess on the floor and he puts on the kettle and makes a cup of coffee for Enjolras and changes the filter in the machine and makes a pot of coffee, as the coffee machine is the only thing that Enjolras has unpacked, in the attempt to lessen his guilt. He places the cup by Enjolras’s door, far away so that it doesn’t get knocked over when he opens it. He knocks on Enjolras’s bedroom door and then leaves the apartment as quietly as he can without making too much noise and goes down to Joly and Bossuet’s.  
Joly and Bossuet’s apartment actually looks like a set of a model apartment that is from Ikea and doesn’t actually look real enough to be an apartment where students own. It is tidy and there is nothing on the floor and it is filled with cushions and canvases of flower prints on the wall. It is difficult to believe that two students own this apartment and they apparently moved in the day before. Compared to his own and Enjolras’s apartment , it makes theirs look completely shit and makes it look like the before picture of a house before it goes on one of those home decoration shows. Joly is on the sofa and Bossuet is sitting on arm chair opposite him and both have a mug of hot chocolate in their hands. When Grantaire opens up their door, he makes his way onto the sofa as Joly is patting the cushion, trying to urge him to sit down. Joly and Bossuet are both in their pyjamas and Joly has taken off his leg and his fake leg is resting against the arm of the sofa and it is being used as a drinks holder, with a mug of hot chocolate in there for Grantaire.  
“So what is going on?” Bossuet asks once Grantaire has taken a sip of hot chocolate and has made himself comfortable on the sofa. “Joly mentioned something about a fight about a microwave and you and Enjolras are not speaking.”

Grantaire lets out a sigh and closes his eyes so that he can avoid looking at Joly’s concerned face. “It is just not a big deal, “ he says. “We just got into a fight as me and Bahorel hung out last night and we played catch that went wrong and it broke the microwave.”

“I was going to ask you about how Enjolras is involved in this, but I think the question of how you broke a microwave is more important.” Joly says. 

“Me and Bahorel were playing extreme catch.” Grantaire answers. 

“Is this the one with fire?” Bossuet asks. 

“Naturally.” Grantaire replies and he takes a sip of his coco, letting the warmth go through him for a few seconds. “Bahorel burnt his hand and he tried to get the ball out of his hands fast as he could and the microwave was in the road and the ball got thrown at it.”

“So why is Enjolras angry?” Joly asks. 

“Because Bahorel’s roommate is his best friend, and it was his microwave that we broke.” Grantaire’s sighs. “And then he goes on about how his friend is now oppressed because he doesn’t have a microwave now. I said that I was sorry and all that, but Enjolras is still pissed and then I made comment about Robespierre and now Enjolras wants to have me guillotined”

Joly hums thoughtfully to himself and then looks over to Bossuet . “I think that this situation calls for marshmallows.” Joly announces. “Bossuet, be a lamb and got and get the marshmallows.”

“I am already on it.” Bossuet says as he goes into the kitchen as he throws over the bag of marshmallows over to Joly who catches it perfectly with one hand.  
“I said that I would put some money for a new microwave. “ Grantaire says as he grabbed some marshmallows and shoved them into his mouth, ignoring the disgusted expressions on Joly and Bossuet’s faces. “Enjolras made it clear that it had to be a new one and not a used one.”

“We are going to go microwave shopping with Bahorel tomorrow.” Bossuet sighs as he rubs his head. “And we are going to solve this problem with you and Enjolras and then we will be able to watch Celebrities under water without the distraction of you too yelling at another.”

“Celebrities under water?” Grantaire asks. 

“It is our new favourite show,” Joly says with his voice getting excited as he switches on the TV, using his leg to press the on button. “It is about celebrates-“  
“Who are under water?” Grantaire asks. “The show kind of explains it’s self in the title.” 

“Well it is a good episode; David Schwimmer is under water today.” Bossuet says as he moves his eyes onto the TV. “And I don’t think that he is going to cope as he has a faulty snorkel.”  
“And he might not be a good swimmer.” Joly cackles as he high fives Bossuet who is clutching his ribs as he laughs. The one thing that confuses Grantaire about his best friends, is that they have the ability to find rather mundane things rather funny, well rather funny isn’t the word to describe their reactions, hysterical is probably the closet word to describe how Joly and Bossuet act over the slightest of things.

“What is the next show?” Grantaire asks. “Celebrity funerals?”

“We can be the writers for it.” Joly says and then they go into a comfortable silence that is only broken by their laughter and the muffled screams of David Schwimmer who is having problems with his scuba equipment. Joly and Bossuet soon go off to bed, with Bossuet giving Joly a piggy back ride and with Joly screaming the word Eagle as they go into the bedroom. Grantaire only shakes his head at his friends before he settles down on the sofa and tries to get his fight with Enjolras out of his mind.  
**  
There is a special tradition about Joly and Bossuet’s soup and game night, and it has always been there even when they were in middle school together. No one knows about how the tradition of soup and game night had started, but if there is the threat that there might not be one, Grantaire is positive that the world would surely end. To Grantaire his favourite day is Monday, just for the fact that he knows that he is going to get a warm meal and he gets to spend time with his best friends and play some games. So when Joly had mentioned that he was inviting others around to soup and game night, Grantaire was feeling a bit worried as it meant that people would be poking their noses into their tradition and it didn’t help that Enjolras and his friend who has the broken microwave was going to be there. It is probably the first time that Grantaire is not looking forward to a Monday.

“Oh try to cheer up, Grantaire.” Joly says as he heats up a pot of soup. “You are acting if it is a wet weekend.”

“You know that I like the rain.” Grantaire mutters under his breath as he snaps the breadstick that he is gnawing at in half.

Joly lets out a loud sigh. “Fine then, Grantaire please cheer up as you are acting if it is a sunny weekend. Is that better?”

Grantaire doesn’t say anything and he decides to go into the living room where he finds Bossuet playing a game of Mario Kart with the guy who has lived in the apartment block next to theirs for the past year. Jehan Prouvaire, is one of the most brightly coloured people that Grantaire has ever seen in his life, with his pastel blue hair, his bright green shoes and his tendency to wear the most awful jumpers that Grantaire has ever seen in his life, he looks like a walking acid trip. Every time that he sees Prouvaire, he is wearing a hideous jumper that looks like a granny has knitted if someone has slipped something into her tea and she decided to knit while hallucinating. Today’s number is an awful jumper that is too big for Prouvaire’s willowy frame but the arms are too short, it is several shades of horrendous colours that clash horribly, making it look like the whole decade of the seventies has just exploded on the him with the patterns. What makes it most distinguishable is the fact that from the back there is a stuffed cats behind complete with a tail, and what makes the thing better is that when Jehan wins his race, he squeezes the cat’s nose and the cat meows to the tune of jingle bells. Never in his life has Grantaire wanted to murder a jumper so much in his life, he had the thoughts about throwing it on bonfire and he can just hear the tune of jingle bells fading away as the fire burns though the jumper. 

“Do you want to play?” Bossuet asks. 

“I think that it is a stupid question.” Grantaire says as he squeezes himself down the middle of Bossuet and Prouvaire and picks up a controller, choosing to be Koopa as Grantaire can relate to the guy, and they both are guilty for having a thing for blondes, but Grantaire is not at the stage where he would kidnap one and make a plumber go and rescue them, plus he is positive that Enjolras would kick his ass.

Like his choice in jumpers, Prouvaire decides that they should play on the track that looks like an acid trip. It is that moment that Grantaire decides that he dislikes Provaire, as he is that ass hole who chooses to play rainbow road. Bossuet is doing terrible at the race and he keeps falling off the track and swearing loudly when he does. Grantaire himself isn’t’ doing that much better either but he is falling off the track as well and he is dragging Bossuet down with him. Provaire is somehow managing to win and Grantaire cannot understand how he is winning, maybe the power of his rainbow jumpers are helping Jehan win. 

“Isn’t that Bahorel’s roommate?” Joly asks as he points to a tall guy with glasses and a rather normal coloured jumper compared to Jehan’s. Grantaire swears under his breath as Bahorel’s roommate looks kind of pissed when they make eye contact. Next to him, is Enjolras who looks rather sheepish and when they lock eyes and he moves his eyes to the ground. Grantaire does the same as he does feel a bit bad when he thinks about their argument. 

“I think that he is.” Provaire says, as he is getting dragged away from the game by a boy with insanely curly hair and bow tie and stupid looking shoes that somehow go with his bow tie and match perfectly- the boy must have powers to pull of such a look and somehow Grantaire envies him. Grantaire looks over to Provaire and the boy and they are talking about something rapidly and with great enthusiasm judging by the way that the boy with the bow tie is flapping his hands about and how Jehan is giggling loudly about something.  
“Did you and Bahorel choose a new microwave?” Bossuet asks as he crosses the finishing line on the game and he and Joly high five.

“Yep, it looks cool, “Grantaire replies as he goes back to the memory of earlier on when he and Bahorel were microwave shopping, where Bahorel insisted that they should get a badass microwave one that plays a stupid little tune when it is finished cooking. But it also had to be the most expensive one in the shop and Grantaire is positive that he isn’t going to be able to eat for the next few months as his share of the microwave blew out his food budget. “It is a new one, so don’t you worry. I might have to eat at your place more often though as I won’t be able to buy food for the rest of the year.”

“That expensive.” Bossuet says as he clasps Grantaire’s shoulder almost looking fond. “I remember when I bought that remote control helicopter and I had to eat the free samples from work as I blew my food allowance.”

“I still think it was a waste of money, as you crashed it into a tree five minutes after you opened the box.”

“The controller was faulty!” Bossuet exclaims “You know it.”

“We all know. The land lady’s cat defiantly knows about it, no wonder Whiskers will no longer go near you after you made him fall off the window ledge.” Joly says as he places a comforting hand on Bossuet’s knee. He turns to face Grantaire. “You should go and say that you are sorry.”

“I was hoping that you wouldn’t make me do that.” Grantaire says with a ever so suffering sigh as he stands up and gives Joly his best puppy dog eyes. However they seem to have little effect on Joly, as Joly only points to Bahorel’s roommate. “You are the worst best friend ever.”

“I will make sure to remember that when you call me at three in the morning asking me and Bossuet to pick you up from the gas station at three in the morning as you have gotten lost and you have managed to lose all of your clothes apart from your underwear.” Joly says giving Grantaire a shove in the direction of something.

Grantaire walks over to the kitchen where Enjolras and his friend are talking about something in a hushed tone, and seem to be having a rather serious conversation about something; both of them are nursing bowls of soup. When Grantaire approaches the two of them, Enjolras mutters an excuse and leaves with his bowl of soup. His friend just stays there but he eyes Grantaire up and down. “Can I help you?” He asks, adjusting his glasses.

“Hi, I don’t know if you remember me or not.” Grantaire says looking down at the ground as he feels the look that the other guy is giving him is like the one that his math teacher in high school would give him when she was asking for Grantaire’s latest excuse for not doing his homework. 

“I do remember you,” The guy says in a low voice. “I tend not to forget the face of someone who broke my microwave with a flaming tennis ball.”

Clearly he is a bit angry, Grantaire thinks as he tries to think about the next thing to say, opening and closing his mouth as he thinks that he has found an idea, but then he forgets it the moment that he is about to say it. “I’m really sorry about that. It won’t happen again. I won’t even come into your apartment ever again.” 

“I think that is a bit unnecessary.” The guy says adjusting his glasses once more. “Hopefully it is going to be a one time thing, as I want to be safe in my own apartment in flames and I don’t want to see my ”  
“I don’t know if you will be that safe with Bahorel as your roommate.” Grantaire chuckles. “I’m Grantaire by the way.”

“Combeferre.” The other guy says. “I’ve heard stories about you, from Enjolras and Bahorel.”

“Good ones or bad.” Grantaire asks nervously, as he can’t do with someone who he has just met judging him for all the shit that he has pulled within the past few days as Combeferre looks like the type of guy who would be questioning his choices big time. 

“The ones from Bahorel are questionable, especially about the one where you got into a fight with a claw machine while drunk.” Combeferre says with a tone of amusement.  
“I was really wanting that bear.” Grantaire says ignoring the burning sensation that was happening with his ears as that was the story that Bahorel told to all the new people he met if they knew Grantaire. It happened in their first year and what makes it more embarrassed is the fact that Grantaire cried over not winning a bear even though he could have bought at least three bears with the amount of money that he spent on the claw machine.

“The ones that Enjolras tells me make me confused.” Combeferre says. “There was the one when he first met you, you were naked. There was the one about the fight with the microwave and there was the story about the ghost in your apartment who makes coffee.” Combeferre sends a knowing look towards Grantaire. “I would love to set up cameras in your place and see if the ghost makes coffee, maybe we can get the show on the network.”

Suddenly the image of Combeferre wearing a Ghost Buster’s uniform and using the weird hover thing that they have goes into his mind and the theme song starts to play in his head and it is stuck there. He could imagine Combeferre being a Ghost Buster, he looks all nerdy and looks like the type of guy who would be into hunting ghosts and all that.  
“The apartment ghost is a really clever one.” Grantaire says putting on a laugh. “Look I am really sorry about the microwave and me and Bahorel put our food money together and we have bought you a new one, as Enjolras wouldn’t want you to be oppressed over a microwave.”

Combeferre shakes his head and looks over to Enjolras who is browsing the bookshelf. “He was exaggerating a bit with that.” Combeferre says almost fondly. “He spent the whole morning going on about how oppressed I am without a microwave, I was just going to buy a new one but he stopped me from doing so.”  
“So are we cool then?” Grantaire asks hopefully.  
“We are fine now.” Combeferre says with a nod of finality and gives Grantaire a hand shake. Grantaire fights the urge to knuckle punch Combeferre as he doesn’t do handshakes, but Combeferre looks like the type of guy who give out handshakes for everything, maybe it is because Combeferre is wearing a jumper and jumper wearing guys tend to handshake a lot. “I think that you should go and talk to Enjolras, as he has been avoiding you like a guilty puppy.”

Enjolras doesn’t look up from the book shelf when Grantaire approaches him. Grantaire has brought a cup of coffee to make a peace offering to him, and he places it awkwardly on a space on a book shelf. 

“Thanks.” Enjolras says quietly as he takes the cup. He turns around to face Grantaire , but avoids eye contact with him. “I’m really sorry for everything.”  
“It was my fault.” Grantaire says as he places a hand on his neck. “You were just looking out for a friend, that is all. If you broke Joly’s leg, I would be upset.”  
“Thank you for filling the coffee machine.” Enjolras says after a few moments of silence. “It is appreciated.”

Grantaire opens up his mouth and closes it again, really not knowing what to say. Normally someone would just punch him in the face and that would be it, he has really never had to use his words before, so this is a new situation for him so he is a bit lost. “I’m sorry.” He says making eye contact with Enjolras, in the attempt to show how sorry that he is. “I apologised to Combeferre and everything.”

“That is good.” Enjolras says nodding slightly. 

“Do you think that we are going to fight a lot?” Grantaire asks, as he should be know this in advance, as he thinks that they are going to be at each other’s throats a lot, but he feels that he should ask anyway, as he might be wrong.

“Probably.” Enjolras admits after a few moments. “I am a bit of a difficult person to live with. And I am rather good at getting people not to like me.” 

“I kind of like you, you seem to be alright.” Grantaire says. “You are a nice person, I guess. I am not just saying that so you don’t put me on the guillotine, as I do rather like to have my head attached to my body.” 

Enjolras moves his eye back onto the ground once more and in a certain light, Enjolras face looks a bit pink. But it is probably just the heat of having so many people in Joly and Bossuet’s small apartment. “I think that threating to execute you was a bit too far.”

“I probably deserved it.” Grantaire shrugs. “Most people just punch me in the face and that is it.”

“I was probably just as bad.” Enjolras replies. “I tend to make things blow up more than they should, I was debate captain in high school.”  
“I can easily see that.” Grantaire shrugs. “You have a way of sharing your views about things.”

“Come on you two.” Jehan’s curly haired friend calls over. “We are playing strip Monopoly and Joly will even remove his leg when all of his other clothes go away.”  
“Your friend is a bit bizarre.” Grantaire says, shaking his head at the idea of playing strip Monopoly as is a bit strange, he is fine with playing strip poker but strip monopoly just sounds strange. What do you do in the game? Take off a piece of clothing as you go to jail? Make someone take off a piece of clothing as you get £200 when you go around the board again.  
“It is just typical Courfeyrac.” Enjolras says fondly. “You have to love him anyway otherwise life would be dull.”

“Come on you guys, Marius has taken off his tie and Eponine has lost a shoe.” Courfeyrac’s voice comes through again.  
“Should we go?” Grantaire asks.

“I can’t think of anything better to do.” Enjolras says as the two of them make their way to the living room to find that in the short time while strip Monopoly has been going on, Bossuet has taken off his hat, Jehan has taken off his hideous jumper and Joly is too busy pressing the cat’s nose and playing the tune of jingle bells as some sort of victory music, as Courfeyrac makes a big show of taking off his bow tie and throwing it at Jehan who catches it in between his teeth. What makes it strange is that Combeferre is completely shirtless and is currently taking off his trousers while he mutters about how the game is rigged as he is almost naked and they have been playing for ten minutes.  
Maybe the point in this game is trying to make Combeferre lose all of his clothes as soon as he can. Grantaire joins in and he certainly doesn’t take any pleasure in telling Combeferre to hand over his glasses when Combeferre lands on his property. 

Enjolras doesn’t join in the game and he spends the time muttering about the dangerous of capitalism, Grantaire smiles anyway. Out of having all the roommates in the world, he is stuck with Enjolras. But he doesn’t really mind now. Besides he could have a worse roommate and it is clear that life won’t be dull for a while.

**  
Enjolras and Grantaire are arguing about something and they are definitely making sure to let everyone know that they are annoyed at another. Courfeyrac is doing his best to understand their argument, but in reality he has no clue what they are shouting about, as they are shouting in French, and Courfeyrac only knows the words of, dog, cheese and shower. He doesn’t understand what they are saying at another and it doesn’t help that they are speaking so quickly at another, but he can tell that they are rather pissed at another, by the way that the little vein on Enjolras’s forehead as made its appearance to the world and Grantaire’s face has turned bright red. Jehan and Marius are huddled together on one of the booths that is closest to Enjolras and Grantaire and they are writing words down and muttering to themselves in French.  
“What are they saying?” Bahorel asks.  
“Grantaire is saying something about Enjolras’s mother.” Marius replies. “Wait, actually he is saying something about his grandmother.”

“Oh Grantaire please don’t do that to Enjolras’s grandmother.” Jehan sighs shaking his head at the words of the napkin that he was writing on. 

Courfeyrac looks down at the napkin and he pulls a face, maybe it was a rather good job that he couldn’t understand French as Grantaire was being disgusting and who would want to do that to Enjolras’s grandmother, she was lovely and she made cookies. 

“What are they saying now?” Joly whispers. 

“Oh Enjolras has called Grantaire a bastard.” Jehan replies. “And he has mentioned something about the guilloteen.”  
“That is kind of him.” Bossuet chips in. “Enjolras is such a nice person.”

“Do you know what they are fighting about?” Eponine asks. “They were like this when I walked in to here.”

“I heard the word toaster thrown about several times,” Marius shrugs. “I don’t know if it has any importance to their fight. I think that it must have some importance as no one really brings up toasters in a fight.” 

“Well I don’t really think about toast when we argue.” Courfeyrac says. “I don’t really associate toast with the times when you talk about your girlfriend for more than the half hour during every three hours that we agreed on.” 

Marius opens up his mouth to say something once more, judging by the look on his face, it is clear that he is thinking of something to say to defend Cosette’s honour. Courfeyrac doesn’t mind Cosette and he likes the fact that she makes Marius rather happy, but he does dislike the fact that she makes Marius so happy, that she is the only thing that he can talk about, and after a while Courfeyrac gets a bit bored of hearing how Cosette has perfect teeth, especially when it is three in the morning. 

Thankfully Marius doesn’t say anything as he gets distracted by the argument. Jehan is leaning so much that there is the risk that he is going to fall out of his seat. Bahorel and Eponine just look confused and Joly and Bossuet are a mixture of looking concerned and looking amused. 

“I don’t see why you are getting upset over a toaster.” Grantaire says, thankfully he is speaking in English. “The dial is there just so you can change how long the toast is in there.”  
“But I have my preferences and you can’t keep changing them.” Enjolras replies in English as well. “I like my toast golden brown.”

Courfeyrac looks over to Jehan, just to make sure that he is hearing them correctly. The argument that was mostly two of his friends screaming at another was about the brownness setting on a toaster. To be honest, Courfeyrac is a little disappointed, he was expecting Enjolras or Grantaire to have done something more dramatic to get the explosive reaction from the other. He has to admit that an argument over toast is somewhat impressive, as Courfeyrac hasn’t seen anyone get as passionate about toast such as the two of his friends. Hopefully Enjolras and Grantaire would stop arguing soon or Courfeyrac brushes up on his French so that he can understand them when they fight. 

**  
The itch on Enjolras’s nose has been bothering him for too long, and he is positive that if he doesn’t scratch it within the next few seconds, he is going to go crazy. Enjolras tries to think of nice things to help distract him from the sensation in his nose that within each second he is getting more and more positive that a fly has crawled up there and is starting to make a family cabin in his nose. Sometimes Enjolras wondered why he would make himself do these things for his roommate, but he decided it would be his olive branch after the argument they had about the TV colour contrast settings.

“Enjolras stop moving.” Grantaire says over his canvas, face not showing with his hair being the only thing that is visible. “I can’t draw you if you keep screwing up your face like that. It is a drawing of you that I want, if I wanted to draw something ugly I would have looked in the mirror and done and self portrait.”

Enjolras lets out a sigh and wonders if he should have gone to the library or the Musian for the afternoon after his class to let Grantaire go and get his course work done, instead of coming home and getting a toga thrown at him when he walked into the door and being forced to become a model for Grantaire. He is standing in the middle of the bathtub with a bunch of grapes in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, as Grantaire, who is perched on the toilet seat as he draws, claiming that the bathroom has the best light in their apartment. Enjolras tries to ignore the ache that is forming in his arms, as he desperately wants to move his arms as he is positive that it is unnatural for a real person to hold a pose for a long amount of time without being made out of marble.

He wonders why he is doing this for Grantaire, but he is remembering the offer that Grantaire made for him, that he would make pancakes for dinner that night and he would wash the dishes after. It wasn’t much, but Enjolras was rather happy to miss out washing the dishes, as Courfeyrac has burn some pages out of his law text book about homosexuality that he didn’t agree with, and it has ruined the pot that he had thrown the pages in and set them on fire, and Enjolras can’t get the ashes and the burnt pages out of the bottom of the pot. Enjolras would have thrown out the pot, but it is the only one that is in the apartment and Enjolras doesn’t have the money to buy a new one. The longer that Enjolras stands still, he wonders if it is truly worth it. 

“Are you almost finished?” Enjolras asks. “ I think that my arms are about to drop off.”

“Art and beauty are worth suffering for.” Grantaire says poking his head from the side of the canvas, with his face covered in paint that resembles a bad case of chicken pox that have been mixed in with a rare tropical disease to make them all the different colours that they are. 

“Couldn’t you just take a picture of me and use it to help you paint?” Enjolras asks with a long suffering sigh, as he fights the urge to break open the bottle of wine that he is posing with to dull the pain of standing like a statue for whatever the amount of time that he has done for already. 

Grantaire pokes his head from the other side of the canvas once more and rolls his eyes. “Enjolras, are you unable to appreciate art?” He asks. “Why should I want to just get a picture of you, where I could have the real life model who keeps breathing and it helps to keep the picture of life moving and help make a simple painting be more than just a few strokes of a brush on a canvas?”  
“You could get Cosette to film me,” Enjolras suggests. “She has a new camera.”

“That wouldn’t be the same.” Grantaire sighs as he sticks his paintbrush on his ear, getting blue paint into his hair without seeming to care about it or the drips of paint that is making its way down his cheek. “Do you want to take a breather from this?”

“Thank you so much.” Enjolras exclaims as he throws the bunch of grapes into Grantaire’s direction and he throws off the flower crown that was his headpiece that Grantaire had borrowed from Jehan, before Grantaire can even say how long his break would be. As Enjolras steps out of the bathtub waving his arms about in as many different positions that he can and as quickly as he can, in the attempt to regain the feeling in his arms and to lose the painful stiffness in them, his foot catches on the front of his toga, and he can feel himself fall forwards out of the bathtub. Grantaire swears loudly and he moves his strong hands onto Enjolras’s mid-section before his face can even skim the wooden floor of the bathroom.

Enjolras gets up on his feet and tries to avoid Grantaire’s eyes, that keep following him as he makes his way to sit on the side of the bathtub. Grantaire has basically saved his life…well not really, as Enjolras is sure that there are a higher number of people who have died putting on their trousers than falling out of a bathtub in a toga. Well there is a first time for everything thing. 

“Dude, are you alright?” Grantaire asks as he perches himself back on the toilet seat, moving the canvas away from his face.  
“I’m good.” Enjolras says placing his hands over his ears to prevent Grantaire from seeing the colour that they probably would be turning. It was rather embarrassing to be honest, and Enjolras is being rather thankful that he is wearing other clothes than just his toga that was just a sheet, as the whole thing of Grantaire catching him would be more intimate than it was already, plus the sheet could slip down and make everything more weird. “Thanks for that, I think that death by bathtub would be a bad way to go.”  
“It would be.” Grantaire says fiddling around with the paintbrush that is behind his ear. Enjolras is still surprised that Grantaire hasn’t noticed that there is paint on his face, or he knows about it, but he is choosing to ignore it. “It is a good job that I saved you. I don’t want your pretty face to be hidden by a coffin, it would be a crime for the undertakers to put the lid on top of your coffin when the times comes..”

“I doubt that I could have so much influence on someone to make them go to prison. Besides I would probably be old and wrinkly by then, as I don’t plan on dying young.”  
“You could get hit by a bus tomorrow.” Grantaire says. 

“Then I will use the time that I have on earth to do something productive.”

“What will that be then Apollo?” Grantaire asks leaning back on the toilet seat with a smirk forming. The paint that is on his cheek is starting to dangerously make his way down Grantaire’s cheek and it is hanging by his chin, threating to drip onto his shirt. 

“I would do lots of things.” Enjolras says leaning forward from his perch on the bath to reach across to Grantaire’s cheek. He places a careful hand down his cheek, trailing his down it slowly to remove the paint from Grantaire’s face. Grantaire’s eyes follow his hand and he gulps as Enjolras runs his thumb to swipe up the paint. Enjolras catches Grantaire’s eyes and he quickly moves his hand away as if he has been electrocuted by Grantaire’s skin. 

“You had paint on your face.” Enjolras says slowly as he shoves his hand into Grantaire’s personal bubble to show the blue mark on his hands. 

“What are friends are for?” Grantaire nervously chuckles as he stands up and moves up from his perch from the toilet. He picks up his easel and he paints in one swoop and leaves the bathroom in such a hurry with the curtains bellowing slightly as he closes the door. 

Enjolras lets out a sigh and he wonders if he has pushed too many boundaries this time. He takes in a deep breath and he counts to ten in the attempt to push away the tight feeling in his chest. Drinking the bottle of wine is starting to feel a bit more tempting as the seconds go past. He doesn’t know why he is feeling like this, maybe it was the first sign of a brain tumour or something. It had to be that, as Enjolras didn’t normally care how people reacted to things that he did.

He goes into his bedroom, removing his toga throws it onto the sofa. Grantaire’s door is closed completely and there is the loud noise of Grantaire’s music. Normally Enjolras would complain about Grantaire playing his musical loudly, but at the moment and probably for the first time, he lets Grantaire play his music as loud as he wants, as he has possibly traumatised Grantaire for the rest of his life.

Grantaire still makes dinner for the two of them, but he avoids eye contact with Enjolras as much as he can and Enjolras’s attempts to make conversation are shot down, with one word answers from Grantaire. Throughout dinner he keeps noticing that Grantaire keeps touching the cheek that Enjolras put his finger down. It almost makes Enjolras feel bad for what he has done, he has basically broke Grantaire . A part of Enjolras wishes that Grantaire would shout at him as the silence is killing him, Enjolras doesn’t like him as he is made to spend too much time with his thoughts.

“Courfeyrac is wanting to know if you want to go to the Musian with us tomorrow.” Enjolras says in the attempt to make conversation and break the atmosphere.  
Grantaire only lets out a shrug as he almost pours out the whole bottle of maple syrup on his pancakes without looking at Enjolras.  
“It would be fun and I am even going.” Enjolras says. “I thought that I can take a break from course work.” 

“You must not be feeling well.” Grantaire finally says. 

“You are acting as if I don’t do anything else apart from study and annoy you.” Enjolras replies. 

“Well you also spend too much time in the bathroom and spend far too much time on your hair as well.” Grantaire says. “You were in the bathroom for half an hour this morning.”  
“Well I was wanting to look good for all the people that I might meet today.” Enjolras curtly replies. “There is no reason for looking sloppy.”

“I thought that you were just trying too look good in the attempt to get a date.” Grantaire says through a mouthful of pancake. 

“Who would want to go on a date with me?” Enjolras chuckles, shaking his head at how stupid the notion of someone wanting to go on a date with him is, as there is a better chance of pigs wanting to fly. 

Grantaire mumbles something, but Enjolras isn’t too sure if he has heard what he thought that he heard as Grantaire has half a pancake in his mouth. Either Grantaire said something on the lines of ‘I would,’ or he said something about the roof. There is a better chance of Grantaire talking about the roof. Enjolras decides to let the idea go out of his mind and he decides that trying to convert Grantaire into hating Game of Thrones is probably more important than something that he may or may not of heard.  
**

After a month of communal living and basically being adopted into this large group of people Grantaire has learnt many things, he has learnt to label all of his food in the communal fridge that is in Epionine’s and Musichetta’s as if there is no label, the food isn’t his anymore. He has learnt that things go to hell if he forgets that he has to wash the dishes, and Enjolras isn’t that keen on having to drink his coffee out of a bowl. He has learnt not to piss of Jehan too much as he punches harder than Bahorel. He learns that even though Enjolras’s family only seems to live about half an hour away, Enjolras doesn’t speak to them and no one should ask questions. He learns not to ask questions about Cosette’s past or Epionine’s. He also learns not to ask Marius about his love for Cosette or about his hatred of peacocks. Basically he has learnt not to ask any questions about anyone. And he has learned how to piss of Enjolras as many ways that he can. It is not that he deliberately tries to annoy Enjolras, it just happens. It is like an avalanche effect takes place, he opens up his mouth or he leaves one of his shoes on the ground and all hell breaks loose. He does try his best to get on with the Greek god who is living with him, as he would like to have an actual conversation without a fight, but as the days go on, that possibility is looking less and less likely.

Most of the time, Enjolras doesn’t even really speak to him that much. Instead of words, Enjolras communicates with him in glares, and Grantaire has become rather good at interpreting them, he likes to believe. He thinks when Enjolras stares at him with his eyes narrowed down and when he is in the kitchen, it simply means ‘Grantaire, you bastard, where are my fucking Cheerios’?’ (That look is rather a common one, as Grantaire has taken up to playing his new game called ‘hide the cereal.’ He only puts the box on the top self as Enjolras can’t reach up there without the use of a chair or a tall friend.) When Enjolras stares at him with his fists clenched and his nostrils flaring about (Seriously, he could put Pontmercy out of the business for having the most passionate nostrils.) and they are in the living room this translates as, ‘Grantaire, why the hell are you watching Glee? I am trying to study.’ And Grantaire’s personal favourite is when they are in the Musian and he is laughing too loud with the unfortunate person who is sitting with him, Enjolras will just glare at him and try and grab the closest object as if he is going to launch it at his head, but thankfully Combeferre and Courfeyrac are rather good at removing the dangerous objects from Enjolras’s reach. That glare means ‘Grantaire if don’t shut up while I am trying to talk about pandas, I am going to turn your balls into beads for Musichetta’s cornrows and she will look amazing.’ Usually when he gets that glare from Enjolras, he will just shut up as even though there is no doubt about it that she will look fabulous with his testicles in her hair, Grantaire will prefer to have his ones attached to his body.

They are in the Musian right now and Enjolras is making the best effort to not speak to him, speak about him or even look at his direction, meaning that Grantaire has pissed him off quite a bit. However Grantaire doesn’t exactly know what he has done this time, it is not as if Grantaire keeps an agenda for pissing off Enjolras( ; 7 am, hide Enjolras’s cereal; 8 am, leave his clothes about on the furniture and put Legos on the floor; 9 am, Breakfast (Enjolras’s Cereal and toast with Enjolras’s special butter) 10 am; get drunk and pass out for several hours in the bathtub; 2pm, burn all of Enjolras’s text books, eat all of his food in the fridge, watch Glee for hours on end with the volume up, leave the toilet seat up, convert all of their friends to the ‘dark side,’ and become the leader of the dark side, and leave the lights on when he leaves the room.) Usually if he does something to piss off Enjolras, it just happens, it is something that Grantaire takes pride in as he is a rather creative guy who goes with the flow, but he has no clue on what he has done to upset Enjolras this time, does he care? Yes he does, as he is pretty sure that Enjolras has his own agenda to annoy him with as well, (All day: Crush Grantaire’s sprit while looking fabulous.) and Enjolras has the potential to make his life a living hell. Grantaire isn’t too sure what Enjolras would do, but he knows that Enjolras would take it to the extreme and he has already removed all the spoons from the kitchen before and it was the day that Joly had made soup for everyone one and Grantaire had to eat his with a fork.

Eponine is at the table with him and she looks up from her colouring in book that she keeps on her at all times for when she is bored with what is going on, and she likes to use her creativity when she is bored. Grantaire doesn’t really mind as she could be doing something ‘creative,’ with fire, and her colouring a picture of a dinosaur isn’t that dangerous, well it could be because it is Eponine. “Enjolras seems a bit weird today. He has that weird vein on his forehead.”  
“Do you think that that vein has a name?” Grantaire asks.

Eponine colours in the cat in her colouring book’s nose blue and scrunches up her nose in concentration and for a few moments she doesn’t say anything. “It looks like a Simon.” She says finally.

“How did you come up with the name Simon?” Grantaire asks with a tone of disbelief as how the hell did she come up with a name for a vein? It must be one of Eponine's special skills that no one knows about, like her ability to hide in small spaces or to know if someone’s hair colour comes from a bottle, but considering the fact that most of their friends have unnatural hair colours it is rather easy to guess who’s hair colour is not home grown, not unless you count blue as being a natural hair colour, maybe on the Planet Zog, population; Jehan Prouvaire. 

“Enjolras looks like the type of guy to give something that is coming out of his body a stupid, posh name.” Eponine shrugs. “I named the pimple that he had last week, Nigel.”  
“Remind me why we hang out together?” Grantaire asks.

“I doubt that it is just because of my good looks.” Eponine says dryly. “Because I have a lovely personality?” She says putting on a fake smile and showing too much teeth that makes her look rather menacing, but it loses some effect as she is colouring a picture of a cat. 

“Can’t be that Ponie.” Grantiare says as he takes a crayon and he helps to colour in the picture, as his activity of looking at Enjolras has become a bit boring, and he is positive that Enjolras is becoming a bit freaked out by the fact that the only thing that he is doing is just watching him talk to his friends about something important. Pandas? Grantaire is sure about that he has heard Courfeyrac and Enjolras mention the word panda, several times in the past ten minutes. Grantaire isn’t too sure if they are talking about the animal, or insulting celebrities’ make up as there is a copy of a gossip magazine on the table that Courfeyrac is pouring over. 

“You have a nice personality and all,” Grantaire shrugs, as he doesn’t want to piss of Eponine that much, as to be honest, she kind of scares him a bit even though they have known each other for a while now. But the fact that she has threatened to murder Montapanasse or ‘Monty,’ as she has taken up to calling him. What makes it worse is that she has threated Monty to death with her bare hands if he even speaks to her again, has made Grantaire extra afraid of her. The fact that she dresses like an evil queen from one of those young adult novels and her liking of dark lipsticks doesn’t help Grantaire feel safe. “But I think it must be due to the fact that you like Glee and shows tunes.”  
“Glee is pretty good.” Eponine nods. “I really wanted to be a part of glee club in high school, we never had one though. We had a street fighting ring instead.  
”  
“As most public schools with a low budget do.” Grantaire replies, as he puts his signature on the bottom of the cat’s foot in a crayon, and writes Eponine’s name down there as well. “My school was that bad, we didn’t even have street fighting taught to us, we had to learn things like maths, and I still failed.”

“I don’t think failing maths is the biggest deal in the world.” Eponine says. “I think as long if you can fake enough confidence and have the ability to take down your enemies from the inside, you are going to get far in life.”

“What job would I need that for?” Grantaire asks. 

“Assassin.” Eponine says as she picks up her bag and leaves the café, without even saying good bye to anyone or even being noticed. That is the thing about Eponine, she has the ability to move quickly and without being noticed. Grantaire thinks that her History and literature degree is completely useless as she would be a rather good ninja and every time that Grantaire suggests that to her, she threatens to kill him. Already she is going to be a good ninja, Grantaire can see it. 

He later finds out that the reason that Enjolras was acting the way that he was to him from Courfeyrac, was simply because he put the empty carton of milk in the fridge after he used it. Enjolras was being a bit over dramatic in Grantaire’s eyes, as there is no point in crying over an empty milk cartoon in the fridge. Later on in the day, Grantaire buys several bottles and even a few bags of milk and puts them in the fridge, to show that he is not as bad as Enjolras likes to believe.

As Grantaire goes into his apartment after being at the art studio, he finds Jehan sitting on the stairs talking to a skull that is covered flowers and has roses coming out of it is eye sockets, being rather chatty to it , talking about Wilde’s Doreen Gray. Grantaire stops and just looks at Jehan wondering if he has gone mad, or Jehan has gone mad and if the skull is real or not. 

“Are you talking to a skull?” He asks.

“Who else am I meant to talk to?” Jehan asks sounding clearly annoyed from being interrupted from his one sided conversation with his skull. “Jeremy was telling me about some symbolism in Wilde’s word. You can join us if you want.”

“I think that I might miss out tonight, I am sure that Jeremy is great conversation but I have work to get done.” Grantaire says, wondering if he dies before Jehan, if Jehan will take the liberty of removing his skull and painting it and using to talk to. Maybe Jehan would use his skull like a puppet, and move his jaw as he ‘speaks.’ It wouldn’t surprise Grantaire if Jehan did that to be honest. He will write it on his will, instead of donating his body to science, he will donate it to Jehan and Combeferre and Joly can do their medical hokey pokey on the rest of it. Plus it stops a good coffin going to waste, even though Grantaire is positive that there are only a few things that you can do with a coffin other than just keeping corpses in it. Maybe use it as a unique coffee table or as a bed, or use it as a bobsled with several friends. Grantaire is sure that Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta would form a bobsled team with him, despite the fact that neither of their names are Bob.

“Well if you want to talk to us, feel free.” Jehan says waving as Grantaire enters his apartment. 

Sometimes it was probably better not to ask, especially when it came to Jehan Prouvaire.

October  
Within a few weeks of living with Grantaire, Enjolras wonders why he is so distracting, as it is unnatural for someone to be that distracting. But Grantaire has somehow managed to cross that line that exists between being an nuisance to being a full out atomic bomb of just being distracting with lasting radiation of not being able to concentrate for the rest of Enjolras’s life. The strange thing about it is that Enjolras is positive that Grantaire isn’t being aware of how annoying that he can be.  
Grantaire has tattoos, and it is one of the first things that Enjolras learns about Grantaire after a few weeks of moving together. Next to learning that Grantaire doesn’t do the dishes soon on, this leads to Enjolras having to eat his breakfast cereal in the measuring jug and drink is morning coffee from an egg cup, (which manages to be a rather good espresso cup, Enjolras has to say so)as he didn’t have the time to wash any dishes before he has to go to his lecture. But the discovery of tatoo’s are more important, as he discovers pretty soon that Grantaire is basically allergic to clothes in the morning and Enjolras is often greeted with the sight of Grantaire being bare chested when he wakes up as Grantaire has worked out or has been boxing. 

Grantaire has long indicate patterns all around his arms that trail up onto his back that look like flowers, maybe roses as there are thorns on them. When Enjolras first discovers that Grantaire has tattoos, he can feel this weird pain in his chest and the fact that his face goes red. He had no clue about why he was having chest pains when he was looking at Grantaire, so Enjolras being Enjolras googled his symptoms, as he when he asked Combeferre about having chest pains after looking at Grantaire’s tattoos, Combeferre told him to kindly piss off as he was wanting to study. He would have asked Joly, but he didn’t want to trigger Joly’s hypochondria as he still felt bad after the time he sneezed on Joly when he had a cold and Joly had a panic attack after it and had to leave the Musian early with Bossuet and Grantaire. When he googled chest pains, the first result that he got was that he was having a heart attack, and Enjolras was positive that he wasn’t having one as he wasn’t having any other symptoms.

“Hey Enj.” Grataire says as a greeting when Enjolras walks into the kitchen wearing his pyjamas. He passes Enjolras a cup of coffee and doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, and continues to make breakfast. It kind of frightens Enjolras about how domestic the action their routine has become over the past few weeks. Enjolras didn't expect to become this domestic so soon and Joly and Bossuet have been making jokes about them being a married couple, that scares Enjolras even more. From his research on the internet, he has figured out that he likes Grantare more than he should, but it is Grantare's fault as he is seemingly allergic to shirts in the morning and when he works out in the morning, he has tight shorts. Enjolras is positive that Grantaire is trying his hardest to be distracting, it has to be that. As Grantaire laughed at him after he walked into a wall as he was too busy staring at Grantaire's when he was doing one armed push ups. Enjolras thinks that he has never recovered from that, even after he walked into the wall he tried to play it 'smooth,' by acting like he meant to hug the ground, but he is rather sure that Grantaire isn't convinced. The things that Impressesive Enjolras the most recently is the fact that he and Grantaire have been getting on a lot better recently, and arguments between them have died down slightly. They still aren’t best friends but they have been getting on better. That is another distracting thing about Grantaire, he makes Enjolras smile even when he is going on about Greek gods, even though Enjolras has little interest in them.  
Once Enjolras is one two is second cup of coffee, Grantaire begins to speak to him, as it is the safe time to speak to Enjolras in the morning, as Grantaire has learnt the hard way not to engage in conversation with Enjolras until he has had at least two cups of coffee in his system, as someone will end up in tears.  
“I was thinking last night.” Grantaire says with a mouthful of pancake in his mouth.  
“Sounds dangerous.” Enjolras says. “What were you thinking about?”

“I was watching Beauty and the Beast and you know how Belle had Stockholm syndrome?” Grantaire asks. “As to be honest, who would want to be with a hairy guy?”  
“I think that the point of the film is that Belle saw the beast for he was and not for his appearance. You know, looking at a book past the cover.” Enjolras replies taking a sip of coffee. “You know, appearance doesn’t matter when true love is about.”

“I was wondering if pets have Stockholm syndrome.” Grantaire says. “You know that they love their owners and we keep them hostage.”

“That is idiotic.” Enjolras shakes his head at how stupid the question is, as normally Grantaire had more normal questions about why humans are still alive, even though as a species we do stupid things, but getting the idea of pets having Stockholm syndrome from Disney is a new level of stupid. He knows that he should be used to Grantaire’s tendency to ask rather random questions in the morning. He doesn’t really know why Grantaire does it, but it is probably one of those weird habits that everyone has, such as Musichetta’s tendency to sing in a high pitch voice, even though she has a lovely alto voice, or Joly’s tendency to know all things dinosaur related or Jehan’s tendency to enter their apartment in the middle of the night just to look at Grantaire’s owl models. Enjolras has briefly wondered if giving Jehan the spare key was a good decision to make, but then again he likes the fact that Jehan fills up the coffee machine and writes poems down on a sticky note before he leaves and just gives the apparent a quick tidy up to top it all off, so Enjolras can’t complain. “Dogs love their owner.”

“But that is the point of Stockholm syndrome, they love the person who is keeping them hostage and they care for them.” Grantaire says waving his fork around. “For example, you might have Stockholm syndrome as you tolerate me and I might have you kept in hostage, and it would be the only time that you would care for me, because I have the power over you.”

“You know what is funny, I thought that the paperwork that I was signing, was from the school and not from you.” Enjolras snorts. “And the last time I checked, I didn’t have a chain around my ankle to hold me in here. And I hope that I didn’t as I don’t want you to be the one who holds me against my civil liberties.”  
“I don’t think that I could do that Apollo.” Grantaire replies. “Or if it did happen, I think that the world would have to end.” 

The conversation seems to end after that and Enjolras looks over his notes for his lecture in the morning, while Grantaire is doing the puzzle at the back of the cereal box. He occasionally looks over from his note book to Grantaire when he sees that Grantaire is looking at him at the same time. Enjolras hides the smile on his face, but it is failing, and it only results is Grantaire pulling a face that makes Enjolras snort loudly, much to Grantaire’s delight. That is the routine during the rest of breakfast. Enjolras will pretend to study while Grantaire makes faces at him. Enjolras also tries to pretend that he doesn’t find Grantaire that funny, but he knows that isn’t going to work, as Grantaire has heard him laugh far too many times.  
As Enjolras is about to leave the apartment to go to his morning lecture, he turns over to Grantaire, who is washing the breakfast dishes. “Grantaire, you know what you said earlier?” Enjolras says as he slips on his coat. “I just don’t tolerate you, I do actually like you.”

Enjolras doesn’t know if Grantaire’s smile can get any wider. 

When Enjolras wakes up this morning, he is met with the sight of Marco/Maurice/Marius? Who is by his bedroom door standing next to Cosette, and a red headed boy with a suitcase who is wearing a trench coat who is standing behind him. 

“Good morning Enjolras. Is Grantaire here with you?” Cosette asks as she walks into his bedroom uninvited and Marius and the boy follow her. She sits on the bed while the other two hover around uncomfortably in his bedroom. 

“Grantaire!” Enjolras calls over his shoulder as he herds Cosette and the other two out of his room, thankful that he decided to wear pyjamas during the night ,as it would probably be traumatising for Cosette’s love sick puppy to see his pride and glory first thing in the morning. He pushes them into the living room where Marius has perched himself on the arm of the chair and Cosette is raiding the fridge while the red headed boy stands awkwardly by the door and he is still looking as scared as he was before. “Maurice wants to see you.” 

“What?” Grantaire calls from his bedroom with his voice thick with sleep, he makes his way into the living room stumbling into a wall as he walks into a scene. He looks at the group of people who are into the living room, with a look of confusion. “Is this an intervention?” He takes a step backwards and holds out his hands to defend himself in a karate motion. “If you want the drugs, they are at Bahorel’s and Combeferre’s place. Under the kitchen sink.”

“No, it is not.” Marius says glaring at Enjolras. “It is Marius.” He says directed mostly to Enjolras. Cosette pats his shoulder, while the red headed boy just looks scared.  
“Then just forget about what I just said then.” Grantaire says as he moves to perch on the arm chair.

“This is Feuilly,” Cosette says after a few moments, as she moves from Marius to the red headed boy who only waves his hand. “Feuilly had a bit of a problem with his old roommate and you guys are lucky, as he is going to be your new roommate.”

“Are you serious?” Enjolras asks. “We have a small apartment, where is he going to sleep?” 

“The couch is a pull out one.” Marius answers as he pulls off the cushions of the sofa and pulls out the bed to demonstrate. Enjolras is slightly surprised as he didn’t know that the sofa was able to do that and judging by the way Grantaire is looking at the sofa, it is clear that he didn’t know about the sofa either. 

“I didn’t know the sofa could do that.” Grantaire says with a tone of surprise. “I could have been sleeping on a bed during my TV binges instead of the normal cushions. It would have made Game of Thrones so much more comfortable to watch.” 

“Is that all you care about, not the fact that we are having another roommate?” He asks Grantaire with a tone of disbelief. He can’t believe that Grantaire isn’t even thinking about the extra food that they are going to need or the bills, but he is more concerned about the sofa, maybe this is why he got chest pains when he looked at Grantaire.  
“Did you ask anyone about this?” He asks Marius. 

“Valjean told me to find someone who was responsible and I thought that you and Grantaire would be a good example for Feuilly and you have a nice apartment.” Marius says as he wrinkles his nose in disgust, as he picks up the bit of Grantaire’s sandwich that he had just stepped in and throws it at the table.

“We will just let you to settle in then?” Cosette says to Feuilly, patting his shoulder. “We need to go back to the office and we will send the Feuilly and you guy the paperwork.”  
“You know that they are probably going to snog.” Feuilly says, with a look of disgust, the second that the door closes behind Marius.“When they had parked the car to get here, they just snogged each other when they thought that I had gone out to get my bags.”

Enjolras shudders the thought of Marius actually doing something like that to a girl is a bit of a horrible thought that he wants to get out of his mind as soon as possible. Enjolras would rather crack open his skull and pour bleach into his brain than think about Marius kissing a girl. He probably uses tips that he got from Courfeyrac and Cosmo magazine.  
“Did anyone else have a weird mental image or was that just me?” Grantaire asks. 

“No we all had one.” Feuilly says as he takes off his jacket. “I am sorry that I have just come here unexpectedly. I won’t take up much room and I have jobs as well as class, so I won’t be here much anyway. I will help pay the bills and I follow any rules.”

“That is good,” says Grantaire. “The first rule is to knock before entering as one of us might be naked and I don’t want to repeat of what happened last month.”  
Enjolras goes bright red and he looks in the other direction so that he can hide his face from Grantaire, as Grantaire starts to bark out a laugh at the memory of their first meeting. “You knew that I wasn’t expecting anyone in this room.” He hisses.

“Well at least you knock now, Enjy” Grantaire says as he reaches over to ruffle Enjolras’s hair and making it even messier than normal. Enjolras bats off Grantaire’s hand and tries to smooth out his hair to get his signature Enjolras fluffiness that he favours with his hair.  
“Do I want to know?” Feuilly asks.

“Probably not.” Enjolras says shoving a hand over Grantiare’s mouth when he speaks. He tries not to show too much disgust when Grantaire licks his hand, as it is just gross. Enjolras is positive that if Grantaire did that to Joly, he wouldn’t be alive as Bossuet would have murdered him. “Why don’t you skip unpacking and we can introduce you to some of our friends in the Musian?” Enjolras suggests wiping his hand against his trousers, while Grantaire looks incredibly smug. “We can even buy you breakfast as a treat.”  
“The Musian’s great you know,” Grantaire says as he holds open the door for Feuilly and Enjolras. “The place looks as shady as fuck, but they do great pancakes. It shows you that you shouldn’t judge a coffee shop with how shady the street it is in.” 

**

“This is Feuilly.” Enjolras says as he enters the back room of the café that his friends have taken up to frequenting when they have time off between work and classes. The Musian isn’t exactly a populated café, such as a Starbucks, mostly due to the location of it. As most would rather go to a café that is in a local area and has lots of access to street lights and the public, and not in an alley, where there is the potential for someone to get mugged in, but according to Eponine, she has managed to scare of Monty, whoever the hell he is. From the long winded tale that he got from Eponine about the Musian and Monty, Enjolras finds out that she managed to scare him by threating to dirty his clothes and shave his head. Enjolras isn’t too sure if this story is true or not, as it seems a bit stupid for a thug to be scared of getting his shoes scuffed, but he appreciates the fact that he can go to the café in peace. Enjolras rather likes the Musian even though the drinks are disappointing and so is the food, and he does wonder on a regular basis how the place is still open due to the lack of business, but it could be due to the fact that everyone loves Muischetta and they will spend hours just speaking to her.  
“He is new to the area, so Eponine don’t scare him off.” Grantaire says focusing on Eponine. Eponine holds her hands in defence and has a rather innocent look on her face…well as innocent as she can be.

Combeferre being ever the gentleman who he is, makes his way to Feuillly and shakes his hand and gives him a warm welcome, even though he looks as if he hasn’t slept in days, so he stumbles slightly as he makes his way to Feuilly. It is not that Feuilly is not welcome by the group, but the rest of them are just too lazy to get out of their chairs, so they just wave their greetings to Feuilly, who takes them all with great enthusiasm. Feuilly takes the chair that is in-between Jehan and Bahorel, who give him the twenty questions the moment that his bum touches the seat.

“So why have you changed apartments?” Bahorel asks in a low voice. “Did you set your place on fire as Bossuet over there had a bit of an incident when he was doing ‘science.’” Bahorel asks pointing at Bossuet’s direction, Bossuet just laughs good naturally.

“Was it rats or wood lice?” Joly says. “I heard that there was an infestation of rats in one of the apartment blocks, and they had to get the exterminators out sort it out.”  
“No it wasn’t that.” Feuilly answers with a shake of his head. “Crazy roommate. He was into taxidermy and he wanted to make me into model. I thought it would be safer if I left before I ended up in a museum”

“You haven’t met a crazy roommate until you have roomed with Enjolras” Courfeyrac says. “We had a sleepover and he got upset with me because I messed up his books and I didn’t put them back in order. I do feel sorry for you Grantaire.”

“Apollo isn’t that bad.” Grantaire says looking at Enjolras’s direction. Enjolras looks at him and gives Grantaire a discrete smile that is hidden by the text book that he has hidden over his face. He pretends to read it, but it hard to pretend to do that, as the book is upside down. “It is fine until you leave your underpants on the floor.”

“You know that there is a basket.” Enjolras says looking up from his book. “You are allowed to leave your boxers on the floor in your own room, but I have to protest when they are in the kitchen.”  
“Why were your boxers in the kitchen?” Jehan asks. “Were you playing strip poker with the microwave again?”

“That only happened once and I was rather drunk at the time.” Grantaire replies. “Joly don’t you say anything!” Grantaire says thrusting a finger in Joly’s direction once Joly has opened up his mouth. 

“I am trying to work here.” Combeferre calls over from his desk at the back, he looks over his glasses at everyone as he grabs his text book out of the towering pile that is on the table. Before Enjolras can comment about the leaning tower of books, Combeferre has already moved to his attention back to his laptop, and he is typing furiously on the keyboard, making a loud clicking noise that turns out to be rather annoying after a few moments. 

“What are you writing?” Courfeyrac asks. 

“Paper.” Combeferre replies without even looking up from his computer.

“What is it called?” Joly asks. “I miss sleeping?”

“An ode to my sleep cycle?” Jehan adds in.

“Why won’t my eye lids close?” Enjolras says.

“I love coffee.” Marius says.

“I need more coffee.” Combeferre groans as he stands up and makes to go down stairs so he can get his coffee. 

“No you don’t.” Bahorel says as he stands up and pushes Combeferre down into his seat, probably harder that he intended as Courfeyrac has to grab the back of Combeferre’s jumper to preventing him from nose-diving the table and possibly getting blood on it, and having to face the consequence of the wrath of Musichetta, who terrifies Enjolras with her long nails and her fondness for red lipstick, but he wouldn’t admit that. “You need to sleep. You haven’t slept in days and you have been keeping me up with your typing during the night.”

“If I write this paper, I am going to pass my course, then I can become a doctor and then I could help cure diseases.” Combeferre laughs hysterically. “I don’t need to sleep, I am going to save the world.”

“Well you are not Superman, ‘Ferre.” Courfeyrac says, “But you wear those glasses, so you could be Clark Kenting it right now.” He turns to the rest of the group and asks. “Have any of you seen Combeferre, without his glasses or do you see his secret identity of Mothman?”

“Well I live with the guy, and I am pretty sure that he doesn’t own a single pair of tights.” Bahorel interjects. “A lot of jumpers , but no tights.”

“To be honest, Combeferre doesn’t look like the type of guy to wear spandex.” Cosette says, wrinkling her nose, probably as she is imagining Combeferre wearing tights with his underwear on top. Maybe it would be something that Combeferre would do when he is drunk, but it seems very unlikely for him to do it, as Combeferre is the type of guy to be really organised and know what order his clothes go on when he gets dressed.  
“He looks if he is one lab explosion away from becoming a super villain.” Bossuet says. “Combeferre, you really need to sleep.” 

“No, I really need to do my paper.” Combeferre says as he tries to swat, Bossuet’s hand away from him, but he misjudged his distance and was waving at the other side of the table as Bossuet was too far away.

“Combeferre, you always tell me that the most important thing is to sleep.” Enjolras says, thinking about the millions of times during high school when Combeferre would mother hen all over his ass, especially during the exam periods about the importance of eating and sleeping, but Combeferre never follows his own advice and he would be even more tired than Enjolras was already.

“But I am not you.” Combeferre slurs. “I can manage to survive without sleep, as I have glasses. I really want coffee.”

Enjolras stands up with a sigh. “Fine,” He says, trying to hide his amusement at the crap that is coming out of Combeferre’s mouth at the moment, as this is a serious situation, but he does enjoy the things that Combeferre says when he is tired or when he is asleep. You can actually have a full conversation with Combeferre when he is asleep, but it doesn’t make any sense, especially the one where Combeferre declared that he had the power of pasta, one of Enjolras’s personal favourite conversations he has had with Combeferre during a sleep over. He did ask Combeferre about his Spaghetti lasers in the morning, but Combeferre only looked at him as if he had grown an extra head. “Does any one else want something when I am down?” he asks, as he pulls out a scrap of paper so he can take down his friend orders.

“I want hot chocolate.” Jehan says. “But from a good coffee shop and not here.”

“How dare you insult the Musian!” Joly screeches, while Bossuet just looks highly offended as if he has been insulted personally. Enjolras was expecting this reaction from Joly and Bossuet, as they are strangely defensive over the Musian even though they complain about the lack of pasties and disabled access on a regular basis, but Enjolras thinks it has something to do with Muischetta. Bossuet and Joly have this weird liking of Chetta, they make sure that they speak to her for almost ten minutes and they enter and leave the Musian and they are super polite to her when she comes up, and Bossuet and Joly tell her a lot of jokes in the attempt to make her laugh. But he wasn’t prepared for Joly’s bat scream that left him almost death in one ear.

“I just don’t like their hot chocolate.” Jehan says looking slightly frightened. “I love the place, please don’t hurt me.” He squeaks and he hides behind Courfeyrac and they go under the table together to take shelter from being hit with Joly’s cane.

“Musichetta puts lots of love and care into the hot chocolate.” Bossuet says shaking his head in disgust at Jehan’s comment. 

“I think that I will have tea.” Cosette says as she pulls out her purse and pushes a few coins into Enjolras’s direction. “Marius do you want a cookie?” Marius only nods and continues to look at his newspaper, somehow managing to be undisturbed from it, only looking up when he wants to put a comment into the table. 

The rest put in their orders and Jehan is forced to have a hot chocolate by Joly, who holds his cane up in a threating manor at him, when Enjolras asks him what he wants. And Joly tells Enjolras to make sure that Musichetta puts extra love in the hot chocolate, making sure that Jehan changes his mind about it.  
“I’ll go and help you with drinks.” Grantaire says. 

They go down to the main area of the café, where it is empty- that isn’t a surprise to be honest. Musichetta is sitting on one of the arm chairs near the window, with her feet propped up on a coffee table wearing no shoes and her high heels have been kicked off somewhere with a magazine and a cup of ice cream. When Enjolras comes to the front desk and presses the bell, she comes to life and she is at the machines within a matter of seconds. Enjolras hands her the bit of paper he was taking orders on and she switches on the machine that starts with a loud hissing noise, that makes Grantaire jump a bit when he hears it. 

 

“Joly says that you need to put extra love in the hot chocolate,” Enjolras instructs, wondering how someone puts love into food or a drink, it is not as if Musichetta can rip out her heart and use it as a salt shaker or anything and pour love onto drinks. It is just a strange expression that hopefully, during the year, Enjolras will eventually find the meaning to.  
“Will do Chief.” Musichetta says making a mock salute as she continues to fiddle around with the machine and frothing up milk and doing about ten different things at once.  
“Are you letting Combeferre have coffee?” Grantaire asks when he sees Musichetta reach for the coffee pot. 

“Yep.” Enjolras says. “He did ask for it after all and he gave me the money for it.”

“But weren’t you wanting him to sleep?” Grantaire asks with a tone of disbelief. 

“He is a grown man, Grantaire.” Enjolras says, actually looking at Grantaire. “He can make his own choices.”

Grantaire only rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath about how stupid Enjolras is being. Enjolras just pretends for a brief second that the comment doesn’t bother him in the slightest. The comment doesn’t have any effect on him, but the fact that Grantiare is the one who is saying it, makes things a little sore. He likes Grantaire and he genially wants to get along with him, but comments like that do actually hurt him a little. Deciding that he was being the better person, Enjolras doesn’t say anything, but he makes the plan to hide Grantiare’s Glee DVD’s when they get back home.

“Tell Joly and Bossuet, that I have put extra love in their drinks.” Musichetta says with a wink in Enjolras’s direction. 

“Will do Chetta.” Enjolras says as he picks up the first tray and he goes upstairs to the back room, with Grantaire following behind him. 

When they go back into the back room , they find Feuilly and Bahorel chatting away as if they are old friends in the corner. Courfeyrac and Jehan are still under the table and Joly is trying to get to them with his cane, shouting something about how they are never going to find the true meaning of love. While Bossuet is doing nothing about and he is just watching them and occasionally encouraging Joly to hit them in the knees with the cane. Combeferre is still doing his paper, but he has slumped over on his laptop and he is pecking slowly at the keyboard with one finger, using the other hand in the attempt to cover his yawns and prove to the others that he is not tired. Marius is still reading his newspaper and is somehow not distracted by the fact that Cosette is painting his nails while she talks to Eponine about something. 

To be honest, it is a bit of a strange tableu to see as you enter the room, but Enjolras only shrugs as to be honest he has seen much worse in the past month than what most people would see in their whole life time. He sits down next to Combeferre and he shoves the cup of coffee in his direction. Combeferre grabs it and gulps it down in one swig, before he collapses on the table. Eponine reaches into her bag and pulls out the blanket that she keeps in there for when she wants to take naps during her boring lectures and throws it over Combeferre. 

Grantaire stands up and points an accusing finger at him. “You have poisoned him, you bastard!” He goes over and starts to poke at Combeferre’s face with a spoon in the attempt to wake him up. Each second that Combeferre doesn’t stir, Grantaire pokes him harder with the spoon. Enjolras knows that when Combeferre wakes up, that there is going to be lots of questions about why he has spoon shaped bruises on his face. 

“He is fine Grantaire.” Enjolras says as he removes the spoon from Grantaire and throws it out of the table, out of reach. “He is not dead.”  
“Is he sleeping?” Feuilly asks.

“Thankfully.” Enjolras says with a sigh, as he realises that his plan hasn’t worked as he has no clue about how he is going to get Combeferre home, as he isn’t going to do it himself. Combeferre is a rather tall guy who towers over most of the group and this already leaves a problem for him as the majority of the group is rather short and there is the possibility that when they try and get Combeferre through the door, they are going to crack Combeferre’s head open. And Enjolras is doubting that Combeferre is going to appreciate spending the holiday in hospital. Maybe they can just leave Combeferre in the Musian with a do not disturb sign placed over his head and Combeferre can come back when he is ready, but that is probably not a good idea for several reasons.

“Did you put something in his drink or get Chetta to do it?” Bossuet asks.

Joly gasps again and has a look as if he has been slapped across the face with his own leg. “How dare you accuse Chetta of doing something like that!” Joly says. “The only thing that Chetta puts in things is love.” He turns over to Jehan with his best menacing glare, that is really not effective. “How is the hot chocolate for you Jehan?” He asks sweetly. “Can you taste the love?”

Jehan takes a drink of his hot chocolate and he pulls a face, but he soon covers it up when Joly looks at him. “You can taste the love in that.” He says, trying his best to hide his disgust at it, but he puts a smile on his face when Joly and Bossuet turn their heads to look at him. “Best hot chocolate I have had in a long time.” 

“I thought that I would convert you.” Joly says proudly, clearly not picking up Jehan’s facial expressions, even though Jehan has screwed up his face like a bulldog swallowing a wasp and then eating a lemon. “Best hot chocolate in the world.”

Jehan puts on a plastic smile on his face and only mutters something before he makes his way into the bathroom, bringing his mug of hot chocolate with him, so he can enjoy it in the bathroom.  
“Did you do plan Study Medicine?” Courfeyrac asks with a look of understanding.

Enjolras only nods, and looks at the rest of his friends confused expressions on their faces. Then he realises that none of his friends know what he is talking about, and Courfeyrac is the only one who will understand as he was the one who came up with the code name during high school. “I gave ‘Ferre Decafe.” Enjolras simply, just getting to the point. “He used to do it to me during high school, especially in the last years.”

“He was basically a walking zombie, especially near exam times.” Courfeyrac says. “We all did it for each other, as we thought that the gift of sleep was precious.”  
“We used to do something similar with Grantaire in high school.” Bossuet says.  
“Did he have problems with sleeping?” Marius asks. 

“No,” Joly says with a serious expression on his face. “We used to give him water instead of vodka at parties.”

“And then he would spend the night wondering why he wasn’t getting drunk.” Bossuet says clutching his sides. “Memories.”

“I think that we should be taking Combeferre to bed.” Courfeyrac says standing up and putting his bag on his shoulder. Looking at Combeferre with a puzzled look on his face. “Do you guys have any idea how to get him down?”

 

“It is like a cow.” Eponine says. “You can get a cow upstairs but you can’t get it to go down stairs.”

“We could throw him down the stairs and then we can drag him back to the apartments.” Bossuet suggests. “I reckon that he is going to be out like a log and he won’t feel anything.”

Enjolras briefly has the image of several members of the group working together to toss Combeferre like a caber down the stairs, as if they were in the highland games. He can see Eponine, Jehan and Cosette wearing tartan and kilts and doing the swords dance while Joly is on the bagpipes and Marius is eating haggis and drinking whisky. Feuilly would be riding the loch ness monster and taking pictures of the scenery while Enjolras would be wondering why on earth was he in Scotland.

Occasionally Enjolras briefly wonders why he has such an active imagination, but then he realises that life would be boring without it.  
“Couldn’t we carry him like a sofa?” Jehan asks. “We could pivot, when we go down the stairs.”

“We do that.” Bahorel says standing up with a look of determination on his face. “Some of us take his feet, some take the middle and the rest can carry the top. Joly you are in charge of shouting the word pivot.”  
Joly punches the air in victory as he starts to make his way to the door to hold it wide open. Bahorel, Grantaire and Bossuet, get to their chosen sides of Combeferre and after the count of three, they lift him up on their shoulders. Enjolras finds himself next to Grantaire at Combeferre’s middle, holding him up the best that he can, already feeling the ache in his arms even though he has been holding Combeferre for a few seconds, while Grantaire doesn’t seem to be even struggling. The blanket that has been wrapped around Combeferre has been thrown on top of him, covering his face so that they can carry the blanket and Combeferre at the same time. 

“Pivot!” Joly shouts as he opens up the door and Bahroel and Marius who are at the front holding Combeferre’s legs make their way through the door. “Pivot!”  
“Is joly saying Pivot actually doing anything?” Grantaire asks, nudging Ennjolras’s side with his elbow the best that he can. 

“I think that it is meant to be encouraging us.” Coufeyrac whispers as he Bossuet help to take Combeferre’s middle through the door. “I don’t think that it is helping.”

“Pivot!”

“Well it is nice to be included.” Jehan says.

Enjolras doesn’t say anything, instead concentrating on not dropping Combeferre as is positive that if he drops Combeferre he is not going to hear the end of Combeferre sighing and complaining about the time, his apartment best friend dropped him. It sounds like a bad country western song. He could imagine Combeferre sitting there in a cattle ranch with a guitar and a cow boy hat while wearing his jumper of course singing a song called, ‘The time my best friend let me down, he dropped me down some stairs.’ It probably wouldn’t be a best seller, mostly as Combeferre can’t sing for fudge. 

“Pivot!”

“He really likes to say that doesn’t he?” Cosette whispers to Eponine. 

“Pivot!” 

“Joly if you keep saying that, I will pivot you out of the window Eponine threatens. 

“Pivot!”

They somehow manage to get down the stairs without managing to drop Combeferre or even breaking their own necks, even though there was a close moment when Marius tripped over one of Bossuet’s feet just as he was trying to go down the stairs, but he was saved when Cosette made the quick move to grab his collar and pull Marius up before he had nosedived down the stairs. Enjolras would have given the move a score of ten, if Cosette hadn’t rescued Marius as it would be a rather impressive fall and a dive.  
“What the hell are you doing?” Muischetta asked as she looked up from her magazine as she heard the noise coming from upstairs and she had noticed a group of people carrying something that looked like a corpse about their heads. She counted the people in the group with one finger and a look of concentration on her face. “What have you done to Combeferre?” She asked. 

“We murdered him as he got too boring for us.” Courfeyrac replied dryly. 

“Pivot!” Joly shouts, even though it was a bit unnecessary as they had gone down all the stairs, Enjolras was positive that Joly had gone a bit made with power.  
“He is just sleeping.” Grantaire says. “Even though he does look a bit shady right now, we were going to carve a grave stone, but I forgot my chisel and my hammer and Eponine couldn’t fit her slab of marble in her bag.”

“Fashion these days is just impractical.” Eponine sighs as she sends a glare to her pink studded purse that is hanging on her shoulder. 

“So I don’t need to call the police then?” Musichetta asks slowly.

“No, everything is pretty much covered,” Cosette sighs, as she notices that Enjolras’s and Jehan’s arms are starting to shake. She rolls up her sleeves and she manages to lift up Combeferre for them with the strength of two of them, and what makes it even more impressive is that she is wearing high heels. “We are ditching him in the car and he is going home.”

“Looks like you killed him.” Musichetta says. “If he is dead, can I have his books?” 

“Why not?” Bahorel says as he starts to make his way out of the door. “I am taking the shot glasses with the bears on them.”  
By some miracle on earth they have managed to get Combeferre into the car, Enjolras has no clue how they have managed to do it and is more than positive that witch craft was involved somehow as Eponine was there and there is something very spooky about her, and Jehan was there and there was something definitely druid about Jehan. He even owns his own set of robes. 

Combeferre is spread out on the back seats of the car strapped in with all three seatbelts, just to prevent him from rolling onto the car floor, as Marius accidently dropped his gum on the floor on the way to the Musian and he is positive that Combeferre isn’t going to like to have gum in his hair when he eventually wakes up. Enjolras is in the front with Bahorel who has dibbs driving even though it is Combeferre’s car, but his reasoning was that he and Combeferre share toilet paper so a car is basically the same as that. It was good enough reasoning for Enjolras. 

“Wonder if Combeferre actually has any music in this.” Bahorel says as he switches on the CD player. Instead of any good music coming out, there is none. Instead of music there is the sound of a rather bored British man talking about tape worms in a monotone voice. “I shouldn’t be listening to that, as I don’t want to risk falling asleep and causing an accident, plus Combeferre is going to be pissed if I break his car, he is still upset about the microwave.”

“He should be.” Enjolras says. “I heard that he doesn’t let you use it without supervision.”

“Did he tell you?” Bahorel sighs. “I was hoping that he wouldn’t tell you. This is just embarrassing.”

“He is my best friend, he tells me everything.” Enjolras answers looking at the windshield mirror to look at Combeferre who just is snoring really loudly in the backseats. “You know that the two of us and Courfeyrac have sleepovers on a regular basis and we talk about the group while wearing face masks and eating ice cream?” Enjolras says sounding bored, as he looks at his nails, a smile makes his way to the corner of his lips when he looks at Bahorel’s concerned expression on his face.

“Do you say anything in particular about me, when you have a slumber party?” Bahorel asks. 

“Only that you are a danger to yourself and to society.” Enjolras shuggs. “And Combeferre complains about you singing in the shower. He says that he doesn’t mind you singing, but you don’t sing any songs that he likes.”

“I will make sure to ask him for a shower playlist then.” Bahorel says dryly. “When did you and Combeferre have one of those lady chats?”  
“A few days ago.” Enjolras shrugs, trying to act indifferent to it, but he would call his weekly lady chats over a glass of warm milk with Courfeyrac and Combeferre to be the highlight of his week. It was just tradition with the three of them and Enjolras is positive that he would be lost without them. He has too many thoughts that go about in his head and he needs to let them out to someone who won’t cry if Enjolras shouts at them about social injustice or his comments on modern fashion, as many people tell Enjolras that he is ‘scary,’ when he shouts, they also tell him that he was a vein that pops out when he is angry, but he doesn’t believe either of those things. “Combeferre was needing fashion advice, he was debating about wearing a lime green sweater vest.” Enjolras says with a shudder.

“Did Combeferre tell you that Grantaire was around the other day in your lady talk?” Bahorel askes drumming his fingers against the wheel. “He kept talking about you. He just sat on the floor and just talked about you…Well I think that it was you as he kept going on about golden hair and how you are so pretty and wonderful, but it could have been Cosette he was talking about. You two have a similar description, apart from the fact that you don’t have a Marius Pontmercy attached to your face. But I am positive it was you, because he didn’t mention Marius during the time he was on the floor.”

Enjolras sits up straight on his seat. “Did he tell you anything interesting?” he asks wondering if Grantaire has told Bahorel about how he is apparently a crazy roommate. Crazy was the word that Grantaire used to describe him during an argument about the toaster. Grantaire had changed the brownness settings on the toaster and Enjolras wasn’t very happy about that, as he likes his toast to be a nice golden brown and not charcoal black toast that basically turns into dust when you bite it, Enjolras still doesn’t understand how Grantaire can eat toast that colour. Hopefully Grantaire didn’t bring that up, as he couldn’t cope with Bahorel telling everyone else and he is positive that Bahorel would team up with Courfeyrac and they would give him toast all the time or throw it at him, like the Rocky Horror show. 

“Not really,” Bahorel says. “He goes through his usual rubbish, you know being cynical and all that. He was like, ‘Why won’t Enjolras like me? He is made out of marble, and he is so perfect.’ Bahorel says intimidating Grantaire’s whining voice that he puts on during the times when he has lots of class work or they are just arguing about something relatively mundane. “But it was kind of hard to understand him, as he had his face in a pillow.”

Enjolras doesn’t say anything, wondering why Grantaire would think that he would be made out of marble and why he was perfect. In his own eyes, Enjolras was far from perfect, so why on earth would someone as cynical as Grantaire would think that he was perfect? The other day, Grantaire had insulted the concept of perfection, and how people were stupid in believing in things being perfect. Grantaire was just a hypocrite! Maybe Grantaire was just drunk. That had to be it.  
“Was he drunk?” Enjolras asks. 

“He wasn’t, too sober.” Bahorel grumbles. “I was too sober to deal with all of it.”

“I am sorry that you had to carry the burden.” Enjolras replies rolling his eyes. 

“You should,” Bahorel replies pulling over the car to the kerb leading to Enjolras and Grantaire’s apartment. “He really likes you, and he thinks that I am good company to share his problems with. I don’t think that I can cope with him going on with his normal rubbish, it is like reading my diary.”  
“What do you mean by like?” Enjolras asks as he steps out of the car. 

“Grantaire was right, you are that oblivious to everything.” Bahorel chuckles as he rolls up the window, he puts it down again and says. “More than blueberries.” The window goes up again and the car drives off. Enjolras wonders how much Grantaire must like blueberries as he goes into the apartment, and also how much Bahorel had been smoking to come up with that conclusion. Shaking his head, Enjolras decides that he is going to take what Bahorel says with a pinch of salt, maybe a whole tub of it.

**  
Enjolras feels as if he is going to die. Ever since they had that dinner party at Cupid’s corner or Marius’s place and had this vegan chilli, that Marius had made, Enjolras has felt terrible. He is positive that Marius has tried to poison him during dinner, as he is sure that Marius might still have a bit of a grudge against him for forgetting his name and not going to his birthday party. All Enjolras wants to do is to lie in his bed and be left alone and sleep and not get up until he is better, but he knows far too well that isn’t going to happen. 

Once he has taken his dose of medicine that Combeferre had dropped around for him, as Joly is refusing to see him due to his fear of getting ill. When he was in the denial stage of being ill and pretending that he wasn’t affected by the vegan chill, he saw Joly in the hallway and he was wearing a hospital mask and carrying a bottle of disinfectant while Bossuet was muttering about how it is a miracle that Joly hasn’t bought a hazmat suit yet. 

Enjolras lies in his bed and tries to get to sleep, as the attempt to do school work has just gone out of the window as he just feels too ill to concentrate, and he throws his books to the floor. He counts sheep- but that doesn’t work as Enjolras really doesn’t like sheep. He counts all the names that start with an ‘m’, so he can call Marius them when he next sees him as a way of pay back, if he lives. 

The door creaks open and there is a dip in the bed. Enjolras doesn’t look up from the ceiling, keeping his eyes focused on the one spot as he is positive that if he moves his eyes, he is going to throw up. “Hey Enj.” Grantaire’s voice comes into the room, sounding really quiet. “Just thought that I would keep you company.”

“Grantaire just go before you get sick.” Enjolras says with a groan, just wanting to be alone to have his pity party and play the world’s smallest orchestra for himself in sympathy. “I know that I might be sounding cruel but I am doing this for your own good.”

“Enjolras, I think that I am going to be fine.” Grantaire says with a smile as he settles himself onto the bed and props himself up with one elbow. “I have the immune system of a horse, a half robot, half real horse.” 

Before Enjolras can kick Grantaire out of the bed, as he just wants to be left alone. Grantaire shoves a bottle of ice tea in his hand. “I brought a peace offering. I asked Combeferre if you liked anything in particular when you were ill and he said that you liked ice tea.” He passes the bottle over to Enjolras and closes his eyes in preparation of what Enjolras might do or say.

Enjolras looks at the bottle and then at Grantaire suspiciously, wondering why on earth is Grantaire being nice to him. The only answer Enjolras can think of when the thinks of the reasons why Grantaire is giving him tea and company, is that he wants to poison him with the tea and watch the murder takes place. Well he isn’t too sure if that is a Grantaire thing to do, to be honest, it is a bit more of an Eponine thing.

“It isn’t tampered with or anything.” Grantaire says. “I just thought that you would like someone to speak to. I believe that being ill makes folk a bit lonely as you can’t do anything apart from be sorry for yourself”

“Weren’t Courfeyrac and Bahorel planning for the group to go to a club or something for tonight? The Corinthe?” Enjolras asks, he wasn’t going to go clubbing with his friends that night due to his dislike of nightclubs and being in a room with drunken strangers dancing about wasn’t his cup of tea. If Enjolras was forced to go, he would stay in the car and read a book until his friends were finished and drive them home. Courfeyrac would call him boring, but Enjolras preferred the word ‘safe’ as he didn’t want any of his friends to be in an accident. 

“They were,” Grantaire answers. “They are going tonight.”

“Shouldn’t you be with them? You like these kind of things.”

“I would rather be with you.”

“Grantaire, I am an adult.” Enjolras says with a sigh. “I can look after myself.” He puts on a bit of a smile in the attempt to show Grantaire that he can manage on his own. “You shouldn’t waste your evening with me. You don’t even like me that much and I don’t see why you should spend it with someone you hate.”

Grantaire lets out a loud snort and shakes his head in disbelief. “I do not hate you Apollo. Yes you annoy the crap out of me at times, yes you like to destroy all the happiness that I can have, and yes I know that you have taken my Glee box sets.” Grantaire lets out a sigh and waves his hand about as if he was swatting away a fly. “But the point is, I don’t hate you. I do actually like you-“ Grantaire drifts off at the end clearly wanting to say something else, but he just stops talking, just looking at Enjolras.

“I don’t hate you either, Grantaire.” Enjolras says after a few moments, not knowing what to say. He looks at Grantaire wondering why on earth Grantaire is looking at him as if he is wanting to know all the answers to the questions about him that or Enjolras has something on his face. “Why are you looking at me like that?” He asks.

“No reason.” Grantaire says as he moves his eyes to look at something else in Enjolras’s apartment, deciding to pay attention to the painting of the Bastille. He moves a finger to point at the poster. “Why do you have a poster of that?” he asks. “People are meant to have pictures of girls on motorbikes and puppies on the wall.”

“The storming of the Bastille is an incredibly important moment of the history of France and how it was the people who caused the uprising and not the government.” Enjolras says rolling his eyes, when Grantaire rolls his. It was always the same reaction from Grantaire, Enjolras would mention a crucial bit of French history and Grantaire would always ask why he cared about something that was in the past as it was so old. To be honest, in the eyes of Enjolras, Grantaire was a disgrace to call himself a French person. It is not as if he was expecting Grantaire to go around with a beret and a baguette, wearing the flag as a cape all the time and become a walking stereotype, but he wanted him to have more of an appreciation of being French, it didn’t help that other than himself, Grantaire was the only person who was French, as the rest of their group came from all over the place. Bahorel was from Scotland, Bossuet was somewhere from the south, but no one knew where exactly. Courfeyrac was from Australia and moved over in high school. And Feuilly doesn’t even really know himself to be honest and he just says that he is a child of the world, instead of limiting himself down to one location. 

“I know that you don’t care, but the Bastille is incredibly important.” Enjolras murmurs. 

“I know that it is important to you.” Grantaire says lacking the usual tone. “I guess I care about it to a certain extent, but not as much as you as I don’t have a picture of Napoleon on a dart board.”

“It was a joke from Courfeyrac,” Enjolras groans sending a glare to the dart board where the picture of Napoleon has a got three darts in his eyeball from when Enjolras threw them there in a fit of rage when Grantaire turned his white shirts pink when he volunteered to do the washing. It was the first time and the last time when Enjolras let Grantaire near the washing machine unsupervised by him, Feuilly or Combeferre and Chetta. 

“Isn’t that the picture that you got from Marius?” Grantaire asks. “Looks like you got angry with Marius and took it out on old Napoleon or you have many issues with him.”  
Enjolras was going to open his mouth to give a list of his issues with Napoleon. He actually had at least fifty reasons why he personally thought Napoleon was a douchebag, and why he was near the top of Enjolras’s douchebag list, as Enjolras was sad enough to have a douchebag list. On the list had famous icons such as Kayne West, Jar Jar Binks and Link from Hairspray. Normally Enjolras would be open and he would be rather willing to enlighten the world with his hatred of these people, but today he couldn’t be bothered to do so as he was dying after eating vegan chilli. And when you are dying you are meant to be thinking about your happy memories of puppies and friends and not the people on your dochebag list. Plus there was also the chance that if he was talking about Napoleon he would bring up his hatred for Jar Jar Binks and he still wasn’t fully recovered from the last time he had to explain to confused Bahorel about his dislike for a Star Wars character and that lead to Enjolras finding a large poster of the character he hated on his door when he came home from being in the library as it was a Wednesday and it was Grantiare’s painting time. What made the situation worse was that the poster wasn’t not just stuck on their with a bit of tape but with nails as Bahorel had been so kind, to make sure the poster was stuck there. Grantaire didn’t even seem to know about the poster until Enjolras mentioned it, but it could be the fact that he was sworn to secrecy by Bahorel, or he had headphones in while he was painting playing heavy metal full blast, or Grantaire had a few drinks while he was painting and it was just common knowledge that Grantaire was nearly deaf after a drink or three. The poster had become a bit of a landmark for people in their apartment block and Enjolras has seen people take pictures with their door. 

Enjolras shook his head and tried to push down the sense of sickness he felt as he shook his head too much. He takes in a deep breath. “There is really no reason for telling you.”  
“You must be ill then.” Grantaire says in a tone of disbelief as he reaches over to place a hand on Enjolras’s forehead. “You must not yourself if you are not delivering the world with your scarlet opinions.”

“My views aren’t that radical.” Enjolras sighs.

“You made a student with a petition cry.” 

“He was being wrong!” Enjolras exclaims. “He was misinforming people on what his petition was about and I doubt that he even knew what he was talking about.”  
“Then you burnt his posters.” Grantaire replies dryly. 

“Courfeyrac burnt them, I watched.” Enjolras replies.

 

“I do love the smell of burning propaganda in my home.” Grantaire says. “Do you think they can make an air freshener of that?”

“Don’t think so.” Enjolras grunts. “Do you want to talk about something more interesting than Napoleon or burning posters? Or you can leave if you want.” 

Grantaire doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, running his tongue along his lip several times before he says anything. “We could ask those questions that roommates are meant to ask during those first few days instead of arguing about microwaves.”

“Fine.” Enjolras sighs as he realises that he isn’t going to sleep at all this night. But for some reason he is enjoying Grantaire’s company. It could just be with the fact that he is tired and he is ill right now, but he likes Grantaire a bit when he is not ill, tired and even when he is sober. Grantaire makes him laugh at times, not often, but he does. “You start.”  
“What did you want to be when you were younger?” Grantaire asks after a few moments. “You have to be completely truthful.”

“Jedi.” Enjolras replies off the bat. “I really liked Star Wars when I was younger and I thought that light sabres were really cool. My parents never bought me one.”  
“So beneath this marble sun god exterior you have, you are a nerd?” Grantaire asks as he wipes the tears from his eyes.

“Just because I am the way I am, doesn’t mean that I don’t indulge in ‘nerdy,’ things.” Enjolras says. “I do have other interests rather than politics and society.”  
“But I would never think of you liking Chewbacca and Jar Jar Binks.” 

“Don’t mention Jar Jar binks.” Enjolras mutters under his breath rolling his eyes. “He is a douche bag.”

“Is that the reason why we have the poster on the door?” Grantaire asks. “I thought that someone was drunk and they put it up there for the banter.”

“It was Bahorel, he found out about my dislike about Jar Jar Binks.” Enjolras says. “What did you want to be when you were younger?” Urging the conversation forward as he wasn’t wanting to delve into his hatred of Jar Jar Binks as to be honest, he didn’t want Grantaire to think that he was weird or weirder than he was already. 

“A dancer.” Grantaire says. “It is not that exciting compared to being a Jedi, but it is all that I wanted to be when I was younger.”

“Why didn’t you become one?” Enjolras asks. 

“Because I look bloody awful in tights.” Grantaire chuckles and before he knows it Enjolras starts to laugh as well. The image of Grantaire in tights is probably one of the strangest mental images that Enjolras is sure that he has had during the year. He is sure that Grantaire wouldn’t look that bad in tights, but he would probably have to shave his legs for the tights to look any good as living with Grantaire, you tend to find out how hairy a man can be and how they can put a mammoth to shame and that is just from their legs.  
“Are you imagining me in tights?” Grantaire asks. “I know that all the boys want to see me in them.”

Enjolras turns over to his side so that he is facing Grantaire. He looks at Grantaire and he is thankful that the lights are off in the room so that Grantaire can’t see the reaction on his face. “I was thinking about how hairy your legs are and how you would have to shave them to wear tights.”

“I had to shave my legs for a school play once. Whole body actually.” Grantaire replies, shuddering slightly. “We were doing Othello for high school, it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.”

“It couldn’t be that bad.” Enjolras says shaking his head. “I had to be the bottom half of a pantomime cow once.”

“Bossuet was Othello, but I think that he was that because he is black.” Grantaire replies. “Joly was also Cassio.”

“I can see why the play went wrong.” Enjolras nods. “Bossuet and Joly tend to cause a bit of trouble normally, I think that Jehan is a bit scared of them. Who were you in the play?”  
“Desdemona.” Grantaire says. “Bossuet lost the handkerchief before we went on the stage and we had to improvise using Joly’s boxers, and Bossuet forgot to strangle me, so I had to have a heart attack on the stage and die suddenly. My parents gave the play five stars though!” 

“I thought that my School play was bad.” Enjolras says. “I was forced to take drama club as ‘stress relief,’ by the guidance councillor. I was Puck the mischievous sprite.”  
Grantaire starts to laugh and he doesn’t stop after the first few seconds of when it is considered to be polite to do so. He wipes his eyes on the corner of his pyjama sleeve. “Sorry it is difficult to imagine you being the mischievous sprite.”

“Combeferre has the pictures and a recording of me in the play.” Enjolras sighs. “They are a bit blurry though, as he was laughing at my tights and the fact that Marius had trouble seeing in the donkey head and he tackled me on the stage.” 

“I don’t think that drama club was a stress relief for you, especially when Marius was being an ass.” Grantaire laughs, that results in Enjolras laughing as well, as he does love a bit of a good pun every now and then. 

“Hey R,” Enjolras says. “If you wear your Desdemona costume to Bahorel’s Halloween party, I will let you see the pictures and the moment where I get tackled by Marius.”  
“I will wear it, only if you wear your costume.” Grantaire says rising an eyebrow.  
“That is not fair, I might be letting you see the photos.”

“But it would be funny to see in you in tights.” Grantaire chuckles. “If I wear my costume, I am going to need to shave my legs for the dress. If you wear your costume, I will let you help me get ready and you can wax my legs.”

“Fine.” Enjolras says shaking Grantaire’s hand. Their hands seem to hold on for a little too much as they look at each other and then quickly look away, hands lingering for a bit too long. Enjolras would be lying if he said that he minded Grantaire’s hand on his.

**  
“Happy Halloween.” Grantaire says cheerfully with his dress on and with a stupid amount of lipstick on. He raises the front of his dress and shows off his waxed legs off proudly.  
Earlier on the day, Grantaire had been serious about getting ready for the party and wearing the costume. Enjolras had been secretly hoping that Grantaire would decide to back out through out the day as he wasn’t wanting to wear tights. Even when he had to wax Grantaire’s legs, that Enjolras did take some enjoyment in doing so, as Grantaire swore a lot, he had been hoping that Grantaire would just wear a shirt with a stupid comment on it to the party. 

“I will go and get the tights on then.” Enjolras grumbles as he makes his way into his bedroom.

“And the photos,” Grantaire shouts over his shoulder. “I am expecting to have some photos taken with you tonight. We need to make a celebration of two classic characters from Shakespeare uniting.”

“Whatever Grantaire.” Enjolras shouts over as he closes the door to delve into his wardrobe to find the stupid costume that he had kept for some reason. Even though he is disliking the situation he has put himself in, Enjolras smiles a little bit.

The next day on Facebook, Enjolras’s wall is covered in pictures of a slightly tipsy Puck and a Desdemona smiling together like idiots. Puck had lipstick on a cheek, while Desdemona has lost all lipstick from his mouth.

Enjolras liked all of those photos and he saved them onto his phone, but he wouldn’t tell anyone of course. 

 

November

“So who has any plans for Christmas?” Marius asks over his glass of hot chocolate, while Cosette is furiously knitting a scarf while gossiping to Joly who is feeding Cosette carrot sticks as she knits. Grantaire briefly wonders if this is a part of the strange hippy life style of free love and tie dye that is meant to be a part of the university lifestyle. Through years of being programmed from the internet and all those crappy coming of age films, Grantaire wouldn’t be surprised if someone pulls out a guitar and they have an orgy of music and ‘becoming closer to another in a rather sexy manor.’ 

“Yesterday was Halloween.” Combeferre says over from his laptop, peering over his glasses. “It is too early to think about Christmas.” 

“Christmas isn’t for another fifty four days.” Jehan says from his book. “Or if you want to be even more precise, it is not for another seventy seven thousand and seven hundred and sixty minutes.” Jehan holds out a finger as they look at their watch. “In fact Christmas isn’t for another seventy seven thousand and seven hundred and fifty nine minutes now.”

“So time is a ticking.” Courfeyrac says. “Halloween is yesterday and we have been getting ready for that since March, and now that it is over we move on to Christmas.”

“You know that not all of us celebrate Christmas.” Enjolras says. “There are other important holidays for us to celebrate than Christmas.”

“Well Hanukah is soon.” Joly says nodding into Grantaire’s direction. “And we will end up learning how to use a dreidel sometime in the future I think.”

“You wish,” Grantaire snorts. “I am not attempting to teach you how to play dreidel again. I have a scar from when you threw it at my head when you lost.”

“It slipped out of my hand!” Joly exclaims. “I didn’t throw it.”

“Yes you did.” Bossuet says trying to hide his comment with a loud and clearly fake cough, but it fails as Joly sends him a glare and swats at his shoulder. 

Enjolras snorts loudly and sends a look over to Grantaire from over his text book. Grantaire only raises his eyebrows in return, taking amusement in the way that Enjolras hides his face into his text book. Maybe his face is that hideous to make Enjolras have a reaction like that, Grantaire wouldn’t be surprised if that was the reason for that reaction. But last night, Enjolras didn’t really seem to really care about his face that much. But then again Enjolras had been drinking so it was probably the only reason he was nice to him. But in the morning, Grantaire was a bit surprised when Enjolras was rather nice to him, he had even said good morning to him. What made that even more surprising was that Enjolras wasn’t even on his third cup of coffee for that to happen. Enjolras would say good morning to him on occasion but it was rare and he had to be rather caffeinated to be nice, the strange thing about it was that Enjolras always said good morning to Feuilly, but he didn’t actually say good morning, but he and Feuilly will just grunt at another in the morning as they nurse their cups of coffee. It is as if they are in a secret society that Grantaire doesn’t know about it. Grantaire is sure that he would be allowed to join Enjolras and Feuilly’s coffee drinking grunting society, but he only likes his coffee and some of his men Irish and he doesn’t understand grunting, but Grantaire is efficient in understanding the languages of burps and Joly’s voice when it goes all high pitched when he is very angry. 

“The most important matter about his subject.” Eponine says with her voice rising above everyone else’s who are talking about the game nights where something has ‘slipped’ out of Joly’s hands. Joly’s voice being the loudest and the highest out of everyone’s in the group, as he protests that things rarely slip out of his hands. “What are you getting me for Christmas?”

“A box of matches and a box of crayons.” Grantaire replies instantly. “So you can be creative with colour and fire if you want to be.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Enjolras asks with a raised eyebrow. 

"Probably," Epionine shrugs as she turns the page of her magazine, sounding far too casual about this thing that Grantaire would like her to. It scares Grantaire a little as he is positive that you can make a weapon out of matches and crayons. It would be a colourful Molotov cocktail that would leave puddles of colours as well as fire. There is something that is poetically brilliant about it to Grantaire, but he can't place his finger on what makes it poetically brilliant, well some of his friends are literature students so at least he has people to ask instead of just Joly and Bossuet who say things such as 'Explosions are really cool.' 

"If you do get that," Combeferre says, "Please don't go near my apartment or my microwave. Bahorel is still paying me back for the one he destroyed last week."

"What did you do to his microwave?" Enjolras asks. "Were you involved Grantaire?" Enjolras says turning his head over in Grantaire's direction at the back table in the room, where Grantaire is nursing a plate of nachos. 

"Not every situation that involves Combeferre's microwave involves me." Grantaire says raising his hands up in defence. “Contrary to your belief, I do have other friends than just Bahorel and Combeferre and I don’t spend all my time there. I do go to classes and other places.”

Enjolras blinks for a moment, not knowing what to say. He looks over to Grantaire who is just looking rather pissed for being blamed for destroying a microwave, once more. Enjolras doesn’t need to be in Grantaire’s converse to know that if he was Grantaire and he was getting blamed for a microwave being destroyed, he would be rather pissed as well. And the part with Grantaire getting his head nagged off by him, isn’t fun in the slightest. The worst part about it is that Enjolras knows that he is guilty for making a matter worse than it needs to be, and turning an argument that could be resolved in a matter of minutes into a full blown one that results in the celling being blown off in a day’s long argument at their worst. Enjolras doesn’t want to fight with Grantaire, he doesn’t like to shout at him and the guilt that he feels is unbelievable and heavy on his chest. However, he doesn’t exactly want to say that he is sorry either, especially with all of their friends around. He does the next best thing. He places a hand on Grantaire’s wrist and gives him one of the most sincere looks that he can muster. One that means that he is truly sorry. Grantaire just looks at him, with a mixture of confusion, as if he hasn’t experience such kindness from him before. As Enjolras turns his head to listen on what Marius is saying, he feels a squeeze on his wrist. He turns his head around and looks down and he sees Grantaire’s normally paint covered hand, clutching onto his wrist. He looks back at Grantaire and mouths the words, ‘I’m sorry.’ Grantaire only nods but he has a small smile tugging on his lips. It takes Enjolras all his power to force his gaze back on to Marius who is going about his normal drivel about his girlfriend, from Grantaire’s eyes, who are focused on him, as if he is the answer to all of the questions of the world. It feels impossible, but Enjolras manages to do it with Grantiare’s hand still on his wrist.

“So how did you destroy the microwave?” Coufeyrac asks loudly, in the attempt to block out Marius. Courfeyrac on a regular basis, says that Marius is his best friend, so it is a bit rude for him to speak over him, but the more Enjolras thinks about it, the more that he realises that Marius has probably told him the same story millions of times and there is the very good chance that Marius first told Courfeyrac the story for the first time in the middle of the night, probably wearing his frog footy pyjamas, so really it is no wonder that Courfeyrac tries to drone him out. 

“I wanted to have pineapple on my pizza, as the pizza place didn’t have any, so I had to get a regular boring pizza.” Bahorel sighs as he takes a sip of his drink. 

“I don’t see how this involves the microwave.” Jehan says with a look of confusion on his face. 

“You haven’t gotten to the best part of the story.” Combeferre’s voice is dripping with sarcasm. 

“What happened?” Feuilly asks. 

Bahorel lets out a sigh and tries to put up a front of casualness about him. Bahorel shifts over in his chair, so that he is even farther away than he already was from Combeferre, maybe to act as a safety measure, so that Combeferre has to take down Joly and Feuilly, before he can get to Bahorel if he wishes to punch him. “Because there was no pineapple on my pizza, I thought that I could make my own pineapple pizza. I couldn’t be bothered putting my pizza back in the oven, as I didn’t want it to go all weird and burnt.”

“Just cut to the point.” Grantaire shouts over. 

“I put a pineapple in the microwave to heat it up and my plan didn’t work.” Bahorel says in one quick breath, flinching once he has said it as Combeferre has shifted in his seat. Because Enjolras has known his best friend for some time and because when you are best friend with someone for a while, you tend to know everything about them, such as their fear of birds or how pissed they get when someone breaks their second microwave in the past two months. Enjolras also knows that Combeferre is similar to him when he is angry, meaning that Combeferre probably shouted at Bahorel for several hours and has possibly banned him from using a microwave for the rest of the year. 

“Was it pineapple from tin or a packet?” Courfeyrac asks. 

“None of those.” Combeferre says. “It was a whole uncut pineapple, with the leaves still on and everything.”

“Were you drunk?” Eponine asks.

“Maybe if he was drunk, he would have more sense in him.” Combeferre spits out. 

“I’m really sorry.” Bahorel says, wincing slightly.

“I know that you are.” Combeferre sighs. “When I get the new microwave, you aren’t using it.”

“I think that you shouldn’t even go near it.” Enjolras says. “For Combeferre’s sanity.”

“It is exam season soon, and I don’t think that Combeferre is able to cope with the stress of another broken microwave.” Courfeyrac says patting Bahorel’s shoulder in the attempt to calm him down, but Bahorel seems to tense up even more. Enjolras believes that maybe the thought of Combeferre during exam mode is a terrifying thought to Bahorel, to be honest, Enjolras can’t blame him. He does consider himself lucky that he isn’t roommates with Combeferre this year, as according to Joly, med school is a bitch and from Bossuet he had found about Joly’s exam stress where he got upset because he couldn’t revise in the shower as the pages in his books would get wet, and then he got more upset as he tried to revise in the shower, thinking that he could not get the pages wet and then he dropped the book and ruined it. If Joly was that bad, Enjolras doesn’t even want to think about Combeferre and what he is going to be like, and he certainly doesn’t envy Bahorel.  
** 

The one thing that surprises Enjolras the most is that Bahorel seems to have a passion of some sort for baking. It is just that Bahorel doesn’t seem like the type of guy who would be glued to the telly during the Great British Bake Off or taking pride in having a cook book that has been signed by the apart queen of baking, Mary Berry. Maybe it is the fact that Bahorel seems like the typical macho man with his muscles, tattoos and the very impressive set of dreadlocks that he could probably use as a weapon, just by doing a Willow Smith and whipping his hair back and forward. Enjolras doesn’t really mean to judge a book by its cover, but when you look at Bahorel, you see wrestling and blood and not powdered sugar and angel cake. 

But when Feuilly mentions his idea of having a bake sale to help raise money for the orphanage that he grew up in, Bahorel takes the idea in his stride. And after bothering Musichetta enough and getting Joly and Bossuet into the act, as to be honest, no one can say no to Joly, and if someone can then they must not have a soul. There are even times, when Enjolras himself struggles to say no to him, he doesn’t know what it is about Joly that makes it impossible to say no to him, it is like the action of kicking a puppy, and it doesn’t help that Joly has those puppy dog eyes as well. But with Joly and Bossuet’s assistance, Bahorel has managed to be able to use the kitchen in the Musian for baking, on the conditions that he doesn’t break anything or play catch with a flaming tennis ball in the kitchen.

Enjolras soon finds himself in the kitchen of the Musian wearing a ‘Hot Stuff’ apron with a picture of someone with a six pack on it, getting yelled at by Bahorel about the disciplines of baking. Even though Bahorel is wearing a pink flowery apron and he is talking about the dangers of having a soggy bottom , he is still is intimidating as hell. Courfeyrac and Jehan have made him a hat that says ‘ Baking Captain,’ on it in glittery writing, and Bahorel seems to be rather fond of it already, evidence to prove it, is that Bahorel has taken countless selfies with it on and he has rubbed it in Feuilly’’s face that he doesn’t have a cool hat. Feuilly only responded to that by throwing a handful of flour at Bahorel’s head.  
As Combeferre had predicted on the car ride to the Musian, a food fight had broken out and it had only ended abruptly when Eponine had threated to part people in half like the red sea with her boot if food went into her direction. Within seconds, the egg that Jehan was holding and the whisk that Courfeyrac had in the perfect position to he could launch it like an arrow at Combeferre’s head, goes down onto the counter and the two of them take three steps away from the counter and put on their best innocent faces.

“Right you horrible lot,” Bahorel says as he walks up and down the kitchen, once he has put his ‘cadets,’ into a line. When someone is out of place in the line, Bahorel pokes them with his wooden spoon that is rather sore to have in your ribs that Enjolras soon finds out. “We are going to be baking for the orphans, so there better be love put into your cakes.”  
“Sir,” Courfeyrac asks putting his hand in the air. “Where do you find this love you speak of? It is not in the recipe, and I don’t think that Marius and Cosette want us to use all of the love they have for another just for some brownies.”

Bahorel goes up to up to Courfeyrac and looks down at him, which is an relatively easy thing for Bahorel to do considering that he is over six foot while Courfeyrac is only five foot six on a good day and depending on what shoes he has on. Bahorel shoves the wooden spoon close to Courfeyrac’s nose, and Enjolras reckons that if it is at the right angle it would be able to go up Courfeyrac’s nose rather easily. “There are no jokes in the kitchen Private, baking is a serious matter.” He removes the spoon from Courfeyrac’s face and gestures to the rest of the group. “And I am talking to all of you, there better be love in your cookies, compassion in your cupcakes and-“ 

“Tenderness in our Tiramisu?” Grantaire asks with enough sarcasm to knock out an elephant with a smirk forming, the usual way that Grantaire does. There are several snorts of laughter and as usual Joly and Bossuet are in near hysterics, and for some bizarre reason, Marius is in nearly the same state as Joly and Bossuet, but he soon shuts up when Cosette shoves her elbow in his ribs. 

“Precisely solider.” Bahorel’s voice booms, clearly not picking up Grantaire’s sarcasm or just choosing not to, as he pats Grantaire on the shoulder and gives him a gold star sticker on his apron. Grantaire just looks so proud of himself, as if he has won an Oscar. Jehan takes out his phone and takes some pictures of Grantaire with the flash on, to share this momentous occasion on Facebook for everyone to see. 

“You are going to go into teams and you are going to make different recipes ranging from brownies to fudge cake.” Bahorel says as he stars to write down the names of everyone who is in the kitchen and starts to pair them up with a recipient. “I am choosing the teams because I think that we need to be able to work with everyone in a group and not just the select people you hang about with all the time.” There is a sigh that echoes around the group, Enjolras makes sure that his one is the loudest as he was really wanting to work with Combeferre they spent the ride there talking about what they should make together, so that they could win. Well Combeferre spent most of the ride, repeating the phrase, ‘This is for charity and it is not a competition,’ but neither the less Enjolras was wanting to win having the best cake. 

“Looks like you are with me.” Grantaire says as he shoves one of the chocolate buttons that were reserved for decoration into his mouth, when Bahorel moves his head to talk to Marius who is complain about not being with Cosette, Cosette on the other hand seems to be rather cool with the fact she is with Bahorel, but anyone knows is that the two of them bake together on a regular basis and they talk together about anything and they both enjoy gossip, but every time when Enjolras imagines Bahorel and Cosette hanging out together and even just talking, they are both wearing face masks with cucumber over their eyes eating chocolate as a sassy man styles their hair for them. Even the concept of the two of them even being friends confuses Enjolras, as Cosette is only five foot gentle and kind, While Bahorel, well he is just Bahorel.

The recipes gets passed around and when Enjolras looks at the recipe for a chocolate brownies and realises that he is screwed and not in the good way as he has no idea on how to bake and there is no packet of brownie mix on the recipe.

“Can you bake?” Enjolras asks, as he shoves the recipe in Grantaire’s direction.

“Does buying a pie and heating it up in the oven count?” 

“I am pretty sure that it doesn’t.”

“Then we are pretty much screwed then.” Grantaire sighs as he looks at Marius and Bossuet who have been given the recipe of rice krispy squares, and they look rather happy with it, mostly as it seems impossible to mess up cereal and chocolate. “Why do they get the easy recipe?” Grantaire wines. 

“Have you tried Marius’s cooking?” Cosette happens with a shudder, as if she is trying to push back a horrible memory. “I still don’t understand how something can be burnt and frozen at the same time.”

“You know this sounds like something that we should do,” Joly chimes in excitedly nudging Combeferre’s side,

“For Science!” Combeferre shouts as he and Joly high five.

“Don’t burn off your eyebrows, as I don’t want to draw them on for you every morning, “ Jehan sighs. “Especially you Combeferre, you keep fidgeting.”  
“I don’t hear whisks,” Bahorel shouts. “You shouldn’t be thinking about eyebrows, you should be thinking of the orphans. Think of Feuilly.” He turns to Feuilly and asks. “Is it cool if I can use you as an example bro? You are the first orphan I can think of who isn’t Annie.”

Feuilly only gives a long sigh and rolls eyes. “Why don’t we just bake?” he suggests.

“But first, we need to have some battle music.” Courfeyrac says he pulls out his phone. “ I have made a battle playlist of songs to play while we are baking, as we are doing some epic baking.”  
“Mother Fuckin baking.” Bahorel agrees loudly.

Courfeyrac plugs his phone onto the dock and the battle music starts to play. It soon turns out that Courfeyrac’s battle music is just Beyoncé songs, but Enjolras has to admit that there is something about Single ladies that gets him pumped up to make some brownies.

Once they have melted the chocolate and successfully managed to not to burnt down the kitchen, so far. Enjolras looks up from the recipe when he hears Grantaire’s shouts, to find Grantaire struggling with a whisk and somehow managing to get more mixture on himself and rather in the bowl. Bahorel speed walks over and unplugs the whisk from the mains, and he just glares at Grantaire, possibly for interrupting his baking and gossip with Cosette.  
“Oops.” Grantaire says with a bashful smile. “I think that Enjolras should be in charge of whisking.”

“I think so, “ Bahorel says gruffly. “Can you manage it or are you going to have trouble like you had with sieving?” Bahorel asks.

“My hand shook too much that is all.” Enjolras replies as he tries to brush off as much flour as he can off his apron that is more white than pink form the mushroom cloud of flour that formed when he sneezed and jolted his hand too much, Courfeyrac wasn’t too happy either as he was in the free fall of the flour cloud.

“Bahorel have I told you the story about this dress,” Cosette’s calls. “It is either blue and black, or white and gold.”

“No, but you have gotten me interested sister.” Bahorel shouts as he scurries over to his section of the bench where Cosette is icing a red velvet cake.  
“Do you want to pretend that didn’t happen?” Grantaire asked. 

Enjolras only nodded and decided to just whisk until the memory of Grantaire leaves his mind. 

Much to their surprise the brownies doesn’t even end up becoming burnt as Grantaire takes them out of the oven. When Grantaire wraps him in a hug to celebrate Enjolras feels his chest tighten, the pains become even worse when he looks over at Grantaire and he is covering the brownies in icing sugar and as he is doing it, Grantaire is bobbing his head slightly off time to Beyoncé’s Halo. Enjolras closes his eyes and looks in the other direction, knowing that he will have to tell Grantaire soon. Tell him what is on his mind and how much he cares for him. He knows that he will have to do it, but he doesn’t want to. Not out of the fear of rejection, but just the fact that he can’t do this emotions stuff.  
He drags his eyes at Grantaire and decides that it would be better to look at the other cakes that his friends have made. Combeferre and Joly’s chocolate cake is in the shape of a heart, a human one, as the way to show that you love and care for orphans is do make a cake the shape of a human heart. Eponine and Jehan’s cookies are covered in icing and other sweets and they are different colours, resembling one of Jehan’s jumpers, one of the ones where it looks like a granny was on drugs while she was knitting. Marius and Bossuet’s chocolate rice squares are not even squares and just are squashed piles of chocolate covered rice. Courfeyrac and Feuilly’s cupcakes don’t even look like a cupcakes and they are completely burnt and Feuilly has sneaked out to buy some cakes from the cafe. And of course, Bahorel and Cosette’s cake looks perfect, as the two of them just seem to be perfect at baking and all things cooking related.

“I think that we did a good job here Privates.” Bahorel says as he wipes an imaginary tear from his eyes. “Let’s go and sell some cake for orphans!” 

Enjolras isn’t normally a man who would take pride in himself, but he is bloody proud of his brownies that he has made. When the group goes to the school court yard and they set up the table to put all of their cakes, Enjolras puts his and Grantaire’s brownies right next to the place of honour next to Cosette and Bahorel’s red velvet cake as they are so amazing and they deserve to have a place of honour by a red velvet cake.

He, Grantaire and Feuilly have been given the job of selling the cakes, as they were the ones who had lost the game of rock, paper, scissor, lizard, Spock , against everyone else and they had been given the boring job of staring at cakes until someone would come and buy them. Feuilly has been keeping his eyes focused on his text book and muttering to himself in a foreign language for the two hours that they have been by the cakes.

Grantaire pissed off a while ago claimed that he was going to go for a run, and he still hadn’t come back yet. Enjolras could have been revising, but he decided that he wasn’t that bored yet, so he decides to play a game on his phone instead. Stopping occasionally to sell a cake that wasn’t one of his brownies.  
“Hey Enjolras, could you test me?” Feuilly asks holding out his text book, he is looking slightly stressed and he has gone a bit red in the face. 

“Sure,” Enjolras says as he puts down his phone and picks up the book from Feuilly. “How do you say, where do you come from?” Enjolras asks. 

Feuilly doesn’t say anything for a few moments before he flops down on the table. “I am going to fail.” 

“Funny, that sounds a lot like English.” Grantaire says as he walks up to the table, still wearing his running clothes. Enjolras looks at him and doesn’t say anything and just opens and closes his mouth several times. Maybe he is spending too much time with Courfeyrac as the only thought that pops into his head is, ‘Dam I’d tap that.’ He shakes his head and counts to ten and forces his cheeks to turn to a more normal colour.  
“Maybe you should stop looking at the books.” Enjolras suggests as he pats Feuilly’s back. “Why don’t you eat a cupcake and take a break.”

“Are those brownies.” Someone’s voice cuts through Feuilly’s ragged breaths as he slams his book closed. Enjolras looks up excitedly as finally someone is wanting to buy his brownies.  
“Yes they are” he answers letting pride go into his voice. 

“Hi,” says the girl who is speaking to him, Enjolras has seen her around the campus. Brenda he thinks her name is. He hasn’t spoken to her, well he has but that was to tell her that she had something in her teeth. But she has rather big teeth and Enjolras though that she wouldn’t want people to know that she ate spinach. “I saw your posters for the cake sale, and I was wondering if I can donate some cakes for them.” She says as she pulls out a box of brownies from her hand bag. 

“That is fine.” Feuilly says. “Might help get more money for the kids. We are buying Christmas presents for the children at the orphanage.”

“Do their carers not like them?” Brenda asks. “If they aren’t buying them presents and they need to rely on donations.”

“No,” Feuilly replies. “Presents cost money and there a lot kids and the state can’t afford that. Well they can but they have to give up things such as food and heat for the rest of the year.”

“That could be child abuse then.” Brenda says. “I feel sorry for those orphans, imagine not having Christmas. I follow a blog of this boy who was in a care home. He said that it was like Oliver Twist.”

“I grew up an orphanage and I can reassure you that the children turn out fine and we didn’t become street robbers.” Feuilly says clenching his fist.  
“Well you are a good one.” Brenda says laying a hand on Feuilly’s shoulder and he brushes her hand off . “You parent’s would be so proud of you.”

Feuilly just sits down on his chair, folds his arms against his chest and starts muttering underneath his breath in a foreign language, Enjolras can tell that Feuilly is saying a lot of unpleasant things, as with living for Feuilly for a while, you tend to learn all of the bad words of a foreign language before you learn the basics such as ‘hello,’ and ‘my name is.’ Enjolras puts a hand on Feuilly’s shoulder as Feuilly gets a bit weird is someone brings up his parents and he doesn’t want to talk to anyone after it. 

Brenda has no clue that she has upset Feuilly. Instead of asking if she should leave, she puts her brownies on one of the spare plates and moves the brownies that were on the table before into her plastic container. 

“What are you doing with my brownies?” Enjolras asks, as he points to his brownies that are going into a tub that is getting moved into Brenda’s bag. 

“I thought that we could sell my brownies,” Brenda says putting on a fake smile. “I make the best brownies. I won the award for best baking at school.” 

“Our brownies are pretty good as well.” Grantaire says, as he takes the tub of brownies from Brenda. “We worked rather hard on our brownies.”

“If you are going to sell those to people, you need to consider the people’s needs, that is why I used the finest organic ingredients for my ones. I don’t even know if you used fair trade chocolate or if you even washed your hands when making them.”

“That doesn’t give you the excuse for taking my brownies.” Enjolras says. “We worked hard on our brownies and we used a proper recipe, we followed the recipe exactly and we used crunchy peanut butter.”  
Brenda gasps. “Are you wanting to poison people? Peanut butter is one of the worst things that you could ever eat.”

“There is a label to let people know if they have nuts in them for allergies.” Grantaire says pointing to the sign on the table. “Anaphylaxis is not sexy.”

“ Peanut butter is the one of the worst foods in the world, if you can even call it food. It is one chemical from being plastic. You could be poisoning children with those brownies.”  
“Don’t do anything stupid.” Grantaire warns him as he holds Enjolras’s shoulder. “She is just trying to get a rise out of you. You have fine brownies.”

“No they are not. They could kill others with the chemicals you have used. My health website says that brownies are one of the biggest killers of children.” Brenda says waving her arms about. “You are giving children plastic. Those are just poison cakes!”

“What website did you source your bullshit from?” Enjolras asks pulling out his phone. “You can just tell me the address and I can look at it, and tell you why you are being wrong.”  
“I am not being wrong, I just live a lifestyle that is free from poisons.” Brenda says throwing her nose up in the air. “When you die of cancers because of your evil brownies, you only have yourself to blame.”

“You know what,” Enjolras says as he stands up from his chair. He moves over to Brenda’s tray of brownies that are on the table and flips them over to the grass. No one tells him that his brownies could poison children and no one pisses off Feuilly without their ass from being kicked. There is a collective gasp from everyone. Feuilly’s gasps are the loudest.  
“Go and fight me Brenda” Enjolras says in his most threating voice that he can muster. He looks over to Grantaire who is mouthing the words ‘back down,’ but Enjolras chooses to ignore him, he needs to avenge his brownies and more importantly Feuilly. Within two seconds of saying those fateful words, Brenda’s fist goes into his face. 

“So you are now banned from participating in school fundraiser bake sales?” Courfeyrac asked slowly for the second time, as he looks at Enjolras with a look of confusion looking like a puppy that has just discovered its reflection for the first time. “God that must be embarrassing.”

“He should be, Brenda did hit him pretty hard.” Feuilly shouts from the other side of the room with a drink in his hand. 

“Shut up!” Enjolras shouts over his shoulder flipping Feuilly the bird. “I was going to fight her in your honour. She was talking about orphans."

“Brenda should be banned; she only used store bought mix and claimed that a Betty Croker recipes was her own.” Bahorel mutters under his breath. “A crime that is worse than murder.” Joly shakes his head in sympathy as he pats Bahorel’s shoulder. 

Enojlras takes the ice pack that Grantaire hands him and places it over his eye. He can feel a bruise that is starting to form and he knows that it is going to be a bad one and the eye has only started to change colour. He gives Grantaire a small smile, as he is positive that if he smiles any larger than just an upturn of his lips it is going to hurt. “I didn’t expect her to actually fight me.” 

“You flipped her brownies off the table and shouted go and fight me Brenda.” Cosette says as she rolls her eyes. “When you tell people to fight you, there is the chance that they will actually fight you.”  
“Guys, I think that Enjolras has learnt his lesson.” Combeferre says looing up from his book. “We should drop the subject.”

“I think that we have l all learnt something today,” Jehan’s voice drifts in dreamily. “We have learnt that Enjolras is a man of all bark and no bite and he will get his ass kicked in a fight.”  
Laughter breaks through the serious composure of the group, even though he is completely embarrassed about what has just happened with the fight and how he got his ass kicked because of a tray of brownies, Enjolras joins in with the laughter. It is moments like these when Enjolras is grateful for his friends and getting punched in the face almost seems worth it just for the laughter. Even though moments like this are rare, as even though they are a relatively small group there is so much that is going on and it usually end up in sadness, where Joly is having a panic attack and he is convinced that he is going to die, or when Combeferre stays up for days studying as he is so worried about falling. Or when Courfeyrac’s smile just seems a little bit put on while his eyes look miserable. The moments like that the group has that are full of laughter and cheer, seem to be even better than they should be, and all the crap that they go through is just worth it in the end. 

When Enjolras is at Brunch with Joly, Bossuet and Grantaire, at the Corinthe eating a rather large breakfast that he isn’t going to manage to eat all of, so he starts to put bits and pieces onto Grantaire’s plate as the man is a human garbage disposal when Joly starts to mention that it is thanksgiving in America. 

“But none of us are American.” Bossuet says as he takes a swig of coffee. “We are from all around the world and we should be proud.”

“But America is this large melting pot of all different cultures, they have all of these holidays and all that, I think university is the same. We have all different back grounds and we come together for one common interest. I think we can celebrate thanksgiving.” Joly says.

“What are you thankful for Enjolras?” Grantaire asks.

There are so many things that Enjolras is thankful for this year. He is thankful for his friends, he is thankful for being able to go to school. He is thankful that he is being able to pass his classes even though he doesn’t finish all of his homework when he should. He is thankful that he has a good roommate and he guesses that he is thankful for Grantaire in some extent-mostly as Grantaire can reach the high shelves, so he has a reason to be thankful for him. He is thankful for not getting food poisoning at Bossuet’s BBQ, that took down the rest of the group. He is thankful that he hasn’t gone through a starving student phase, he is thankful for a lot of things.

He looks at everyone at the table with a few moments of careful consideration and just says. “Everything.” Because he can’t narrow it down to one thing and he is grateful for everything in his life and all the people who have come into in in the last few months, even Grantaire. He is probably thankful more Grantaire more than he would like to admit though, but he is positive that there are a lot worse things in the world that he could be thankful for to be honest. 

 

December

“I do have fun in my life. “Enjolras says over breakfast to an amused Grantaire and Feuilly, after Feuilly had asked him the question of, ‘do you have plans for the holidays?’ It soon led to a debate about what Enjolras did for fun compared to what a normal person does if they want to have a good time. “Last week I organised bookshelves with Courfeyrac and Combeferre.”  
“Combeferre called that a ‘party.” Feuilly says shaking his head. “And you were all completely sober.”

“It was still a blast,” Enjolras says folding his arms across his chest. “You just don’t know how to have real fun that it is.”

“From what I got from Courfeyrac, you spent ten minutes deciding if Poe’s poetry should go under the categories of , ‘Gothic,’ or ‘A probably lonely guy when he was alive.’” Grantaire interjects. 

“Well what you would put it under?” Enjolras asked. 

“Poetry.” Feuilly said. “It is not that difficult or if I wanted to be clever I would put it under birds.”  
“Never more.” Grantaire crackles.  
“You are not that funny.” Enjolras says rolling his eyes, but Feuilly is positive that he sees a bit of a smile forming on Enjolras’s lips, maybe when Enjolras turns his head into the light a certain way but he is positive that he sees it. “A dead slug has more wit that you.”

“I am positive that I am more attractive than the dead slug though, am I?” Grantaire asks with a raised eyebrow. 

“Only slightly.” Enjolras says. 

“Can you two stop flirting? You two are the most annoying people that I have ever met.” Feuilly sighs as he fiddles around with the radio, changing it to the most cheesy song that he can find, that is a surprisingly easy task to do because it is almost Christmas day and the radio is filled with those cheesy songs about love. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart is on the radio and Grantaire has already got into the spirit of things and he is singing along as he puts food on plates.

“Don’t go bacon my heart.” Grantaire sings as he places several pieces of meat on Enjolras’s plate. He nudges Enjolras with his elbow to continue with the song.  
“I couldn’t if I fried.” Enjolras says reluctantly as he pokes the fried egg on his plate with his fork. 

“Oh honey if I want breakfast.” Feuilly sings into the syrup bottle. “Then I want pancakes for mine.”

Once Feuilly has finished his lyric he looks up at his roommates and they just look at each other for a few seconds in silence before Grantaire breaks their silence and he bursts out laughing over the fact that they had a mini karaoke session in their pyjama’s over breakfast food. Feuilly didn’t expect this to happen when he switched rooms this year. He was expecting to have roommates that he was going to have to tolerate, but he decides that he loves having the ones that he has, despite the fact that they shout and argue all the time, but a breakfast karaoke session works out all of the bad, Feuilly likes to believe.  
*  
Enjolras is positive that he is wrapped up in all of the clothes that he owns right now, he is finding it difficult to even move his arms because all of the layers of jumpers and shirts that he owns and the fact that he is wearing two coats, has restricted his arm movement. Feuilly is in a similar state to him and he has wrapped himself up in two duvets and several blankets in addition to his several layers. Despite the amount of layers that he is wearing, Enjolras is still cold and he is worried that his teeth are going to shatter with the amount of times he is chattering them. He and Feuilly are both on the sofa together, trying to watch a Charlie Brown Christmas in the attempt to gain some Christmas spirit as each second that they are in the cold, Christmas spirit leaves Enjolras with his remaining body heat.

“The heaters are broken and they won’t be fixed until new year.” Grantaire says as he walks into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Grantaire who claimed that the cold never bothered him anyway, is now wearing his coat and a pair of snow trousers and a woollen hat with ear tassels on them, Enjolras isn’t too sure if it is the first sign of hypothermia, but he thinks that Grantaire looks cute anyway. But he is positive that it is the first sign of dying from the cold. 

“Bloody great.” Feuilly sighs as he wraps his pile of blankets around himself even tighter, just so that his nose is the only thing that is visible. 

“Is there any space heaters or anything?” Enjolras asks. Suddenly realising that is is not normal to see your breath indoors. 

“Do Joly and Bossuet have one?” Feuilly asks. “I think that they do.” Feuilly seems to perk up at this thought and he sits up on the sofa and has a look of Childish wonder in his eyes. 

“They do.” Grantaire says as he collapses on the arm chair, rubbing his hands together. Grantaires’s hands are bright pink and he looks if he hasn’t been wearing any gloves, but the sad truth is that Grantaire has just taken his gloves off. “But they just left for the holidays like the rest of our friends. And Besides,” Grantaire says sounding a bit mournful.

“They have hidden their spare key, as they don’t want me or anyone else to break into their bedroom and find incrementing evidence to blackmail them.”  
“Well this is brilliant.” Enjolras sighs.

“So are we going to freeze to death then?” Feuilly asks. 

“Looks like it, mate.” Grantaire sighs as he reaches over to pat Feuilly’s shoulder. “It was great to make it to the bitter end with you. At least there is a positive.” He adds in.  
“What?” Enjolras asks. 

“We don’t have to do finals if we die.” Grantaire adds in with a bit of a forced chuckle. 

“That is true.” Enjolras murmurs, wondering if it is possible for a human tongue to get frost bit if he continues to speak. Enjolras doesn’t know if it is the cold that is speaking or not, but the possibility of dying and not doing finals seems a bit appealing to be honest. Enjolras is pretty sure that he is going to fail this year, mostly as he sits next to Bahorel, Marius and Courfeyrac and they are not the best people to sit with, as they are too loud and too distracting. Even if they are being quiet and paying attention to the lecture, they are tapping their pencils, mouth breathing and just fidgeting. It is a miracle that Enjolras hasn’t murdered them yet. He takes the best notes that he can, and he tries to study, but Grantaire must be in allegiance with the three of them as he tends to be rather distracting. He always chooses to work out when Enjolras is trying to study or he just shows off his tattoos, just to put him off. It has gotten to the point where Enjolras has taken to study in the Musian’s store cupboard after paying Musichetta to go in there and promising that he won’t steal any food or coffee filters. It is not the best place, but Enjolras doesn’t mind it , as that Grantaire can’t get to him through there, as like many people Grantaire does study in the library, like a normal person and not in a store cupboard.  
“Do any of you have plans for the holiday?” Feuilly asks.

“I was going to be enjoying the heat from a boiler that is working,” Grantaire sighs. “But that might have to wait. What about you Enj?”

“Doing homework.” Enjolras shrugs, though it is becoming difficult due to all of the layers that he is wearing. “Just the usual, as I normally do.”

“You are such a creative and original person, you know that?” Grantaire asks with a smirk, trying to get Enjolras riled up as Enjolras is boring when he is quiet.

Enjolras opens up his mouth to fire an insult back, but there is nothing that comes out of his mouth. He can’t think of anything at all, maybe the cold has gotten to his brain and made him less intelligent. “At least, I don’t have a silly hat.” He says finally, judging by the confused looks that he is getting from his roommates, his insult was rather shit, but it wasn’t as passionate as his old insults. Recently he had been becoming nicer to Grantaire, and Enjolras didn’t know if he should be scared or not about that.  
“Grantaire do you have plans for the holiday?” Feuilly asks in the attempt to change the subject, with a slightly forced cheerful tone. 

“Get drunk and paint.” Grantaire shrugs. “It is how I get the course work done, as I really don’t like it.”

“Is art that bad?” Enjolras asks. “I thought that it would be creative and unique for everyone.”

“It is.” Grantaire says taking a swig of eggnog, “but when you study it, all individuality goes out of the window. I reckon that there is going to be at least one thousand paintings of the same bowl of fruit by the end of the year.”  
“That is a bit boring.” Enjolras says rubbing his hands together in the attempt to feel his fingers again. 

“It is, but art is suffering.” Grantaire replies, laughing at Snoopy’s antics on the TV. “Do you have plans for the holidays Feuilly?”

“I have a few days off and I was wondering if we could all go around to the orphanage that I grew up in and give the kids some presents dressed up as Santa and the elves. We can use the money from the bake sale and I have kept aside some money for the kids.” Feuilly suggests. “I understand if you don’t want to go, if you have families to go to.”  
“That sounds fine with me Feuilly.” Enjolras says, he turns around to look at Grantaire. “What do you think?”

“I don’t have anywhere to be and I can bring some art materials with me and I can let the kids paint if they want to.” Grantaire shrugs. “Means I can procrastinate from doing my folio or I can find a talented child and get them to do it for me. You never know, might get one to do my final for me as well.”  
“What are the chances of that happening?” Enjolras asks. 

“Children are rather intelligent when they want to be.” Feuilly says . “Once you get past the bit of the brain where they laugh at fart jokes, but most don’t grow out of that part. Take Bahorel for example.”

“Or Courfeyrac.” Enjolras says.

“Or myself.” Grantaire says absent-mindedly.

All three look at one another before they burst into loud laughter that echoes the apartment. Suddenly the lack of heat doesn't bother Enjolras as he has his friends and the laughter warms him up. They spend the rest of the night in a pillow barricade that they make in the living room with all of the blankets that are in their apartment, eating ice cream and watching cartoons. It wasn’t probably the most mature thing that Enjolras has done in his life, but he had fun nether the less.

 

Feuilly has brought home a twig from work and he has put a cardboard star on the top of it and there are some old light bulbs hanging from the producing arms of the ‘Christmas tree.’ It looks like a bit of a fire hazard, but Feuilly looks rather proud of it as he sticks it in the middle of the coffee table. It is probably the most festive thing that is in their apartment apart from a few sparse cards that are hanging sadly by the TV. Their apartment looks nothing like It’s A Wonderful Life, but it is better than nothing, even though Enjolras kind of wants the chestnuts on an open fire atmosphere. Feuilly’s old record player has is playing Christmas records that will stop and repeat themselves all the time, due to the fact that the records are scratched. They would be using a proper CD player or an ipod, but Feuilly insists that the record player is the only way to get Christmas magic into the place, and because everyone adores Feuilly, they let him have his way with it. 

Even though he is against the Christmas spirit, most of the time, Enjolras is wearing a jumper that Cosette and Marius have knitted him and it rivals one of Provaire’s jumpers with how it looks, with the snowman that has a 3D carrot nose that stick out and the horrid contrasting colours. The two of them thought that they would take part in more couples activities to ‘strengthen their relationship,’ but Enjolras is pretty sure that is a translation for, ‘We are going to snog now, and we won’t be judged by the other couples and we will look like the poster for a good relationship.’ Enjolras doesn’t mind as he has gotten a free jumper out of it and it is actually warm even though it is hideous.

“Do you like the Christmas tree?” Feuilly asks with a look on his face once he places the star on the top of the tree. 

“Looks rather dangerous.” Enjolras replies, “I don’t think you should plug it in just in case, and I do like living here.”

“I will make sure that Grantaire stays away from it then.” Feuillly nods. “Or if he is going to plug it in, he should tell us in advance so I can get my things before the fire starts and I can get the marshmallows ready.”  
“You would roast marshmallows on the flames of a burning Christmas tree?” 

“Why not?” Feuilly asks. “I am sure that there would be some poetic justice if you looked hard enough.”

Enjolras only shrugs before he continues to eat his breakfast, sometimes it was just better not to ask. Enjolras was positive that each day he was faced with ten questions that he shouldn’t ask before breakfast.  
**

Out of all the strange things that he has done in his rather short life, Enjolras thinks that he has hit the strange things to do before he dies bucket list, when he finds himself in Grantaire’s bed. The sensation of sharing a bed with someone is a strange sensation for Enjolras, he has never done it before and he never thought that he would be performing this activity with Grantaire. It is a sign about how far that they have come along. Feuilly is sick and Enjolras has insisted that Feuilly take his bed while he goes into Grantaire’s, as Feuilly can’t sleep on the couch bed when he is ill, and besides his bedroom is the closest to the bathroom if Feuilly needs to go into it during the night. Enjolras was going to take the couch bed, but Grantaire was rather insistent on the fact that they could share his bed. So this is how Enjolras finds himself in his situation. He goes on the bed and goes as close to the edge as he can without the risk of falling out of it and nose diving into Grantaire’s art supplies. The strange thing about the whole situation is that Grantaire doesn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that he has to share a bed , well he was the one who suggested that they do it. But he makes no move to make a great wall of pillows along the centre of the bed, just to prevent any homo from going on. But Enjolras is believes that Grantaire wouldn’t really mind if he accidentally spoons him during the night.

“Is everything okay, Enjolras?” Grantaire asks once he gets into the bed, he takes one look at Enjolras’s face and he has a look of confusion on his face. “I can sleep on the sofa if you want me to. You can take the bed.”

“No, I don’t mind sharing a bed with you.” Enjolras says shaking his head, pulling the blankets over to his chin. “It is Christmas, isn’t there always drama going on at this time of the year? You know the type of drama that doesn’t involve Santa not coming around this time of year or children finding out that there is no Santa.”  
“Are you not happy because you are here, instead of being somewhere better and with better company?” Grantaire asks carefully, as if he doesn’t know what to say or if he says it wrong he wouldn’t know how to save the sentence. 

The problem is that even though Enjolras likes being here in his small apartment with Grantaire and Feuilly, even though he doesn’t get on with his parents and he dislikes their arguing, but he wishes that he could be with some of his family that he likes. He likes his cousins and he would usually spend the holiday talking about politics and methods of social change while drinking hot chocolate with people who were his clones in many aspects, in appearance and ideas. But spending time in a ski house with his parents who were apparently getting their divorce papers passed through and spending the holidays together for appearances sake wasn’t worth all the political conversations that Enjolras could have with the family he likes. So when he got his Christmas phone call from his father who just stated ‘Your mother and I are getting a divorce, do you want to go on the ski trip?’ before Enjolras could even ask who it was, Enjolras politely declined going on the ski trip by hanging up his phone and removing the batteries from his phone and the apartment phone, so his parents didn’t get in contact with him. Enjolras then just spends the rest of the day eating marshmallows and watching Bugs Bunny cartoons as that is the only thing that he can think of doing that will make him not think about his parent’s situation, as he doesn’t know how to feel right now. But now he is in bed, all the thoughts about the whole situation are coming heavy into his mind and are just bothering him. 

“I was meant to be skiing with my parents.” Enjolras explains, as maybe it will help to just let someone know about his problem, and Grantaire is just there at the moment and Enjolras is sure that there is a good chance that Grantaire wouldn’t remember it in the morning, so Grantaire can’t use this information in the morning. “This time right now, I was meant to be in a ski resort sleeping in a bed by myself, after eating a god amount of cheese fondue and putting myself into a food coma. But I am here.” He sighs with a sigh.  
“Family stuff?” Grantaire asks sounding a bit sad as he turns around in the bed and he faces Enjolras. “It is tradition, I think. Everything in the perfect family dynamic goes to shit at Christmas, just as you wait for Santa to come down the chimney and you wait for your father’s affair to be announced. I think that Christmas specials on the TV are just a lot of rubbish as the family is just so happy, but in real life, you know that no one is that happy during the holidays..”

Enjolras keeps his eyes to the celling in the attempt to avoid eye contact with Grantaire. He nods slowly. If there was the opportunity to take a one way plane ticket to Nepal to live in the mountains for the rest of his life as a goat, just so that he wouldn’t have to look at Grantaire, Enjolras would take it in a flash. He is positive that Combeferre would visit him. He hates looking vulnerable in front of Grantaire, in many ways he wishes that he could just be the marble statue that Grantaire wants him to be, so he wouldn’t have to deal with stupid human necessities as feelings and wanting to be cared for in a manner that isn’t pity by someone else. It would make the world a better place for him.  
“Do you want to talk about it?” Grantaire asks. 

“Not really,” Enjolras says, he turns around in the bed and faces Grantaire. “Why are you here for the holidays?” he asks, in the attempt to change the subject as he is not wanting to discuss his personal life with Grantaire. There is a line that you shouldn’t cross when it comes to delving into your roommate’s personal matters in their life, for most of the time, you and your roommate are meant to have the relationship where you tolerate another and maybe if you are lucky, you tolerate them enough to start a few traditions of your own, and that should be it. Enjolras is more than positive that he has not only crossed that line, but he has flown over it after being crammed into a cannon. It is not really normal for someone to share a bed with their roommate, even if you aren’t close, and talk about feelings. But Grantaire isn’t just a roommate to him, he is a friend. Actually Enjolras isn’t too sure if Grantaire is just a friend anymore, he has gone past the point where his feelings are preventing him from wanting Grantaire to just be a friend. It has gotten to the point that Enjolras is positive that if he doesn’t say anything to Grantaire about his ever so stupid feelings, he is positive that his head is going to explode. Enjolras doesn’t want that, as he is positive that Grantaire and Feuilly aren’t going to be too happy about the mess an exploding head can make. 

“My parents don’t really speak to me that much. It is better if we just have the occasional phone call once every couple weeks. There was no point in me going home to get ignored when I could be hanging out with Feuilly, I feel sorry for him, having to spend the holidays alone.” Grantaire shrugs. "That is a little bit sad." Enjolras says “It is not a big deal, they work a lot and we didn’t really make that bond that parents and kids should have.”

Grantaire e shrugs. "And I don't have anyone else to spend the holiday's with."

Enjolras only nods and he doesn’t say anything else. He tries not to get upset about what it is going on with his parents as they have been ripping each other’s throats about for years and he is kind of used to it by now, and he has always known that his parents would get a divorce, most people in their neighbourhood knew that his parents would get a divorce one day. But when he got that phone call from his father, he felt sad for some reason. He is past the age that his parent’s being divorced would cause trauma for him that would last for years, but even though he is in university the idea of his parents getting a divorce is something that causes him a lot of confusion on how he should react to it.  
“I know that you probably don’t want to talk right now, but I think that we should. Combeferre says that bottling things up it is really bad, and the more you think about it and dwell on it, the worse that it is going to be.” Grantaire says looking at Enjolras, propping himself with one elbow. “Your eyes look really sad.”

Enjolras takes in a deep breath and he closes his eyes. “My parents are getting a divorce. “ He says simply. “I got a phone call from my father this morning. I don’t know what to feel about it, I knew that it was going to happen, but I do not want to talk about it any more. I think that I am going to be fine, I think.” 

“Oh shit,” Grantaire mutters under his breath. “Should I be hugging you right now or something? I don’t really know what to say to make this better” 

Hugs are something that Enjolras never gets a lot of, mostly as he doesn’t like them, he hates the feeling of being trapped by someone’s arms as he feels rather claustrophobic. It is not that he doesn’t get hugs, if he wants one, Combeferre is permitted to hug him once in a blue moon and Enjolras feels a little less sad after a hug from the closest thing that he would ever get to a brother. Maybe a hug from Grantaire would make him feel less sad and maybe it will stop him spoiling Christmas for Feuilly and the children in the orphanage. “I sort of want one.” He admits finally. 

Grantaire shuffles around on the bed and he moves to the edge that Enjolras is on, and drags him close. It is a bit awkward as Enjolras is desperately trying not to fall off the bed as he rests his head on Grantaire’s shoulder as Grantaire’s long arms make their way around him. He is positive that he has broken so many roommate boundaries in the past few seconds. Even though it is the most awkward hug that Enjolras has ever been dragged into, Enjolras likes it, but it could be the fact that it is Grantaire who is hugging him.  
“Is this fine for you, Apollo?” Grantaire asks. 

Enjolras only nods his head, he likes it more than what he would admit. He doesn’t understand why Grantaire is being so nice to him; it just puzzles him to a great extent. They fight all the time, but the fighting has gone down recently and if they do fight it is one that lasts five minutes maximum. But Enjolras knows that he is frequently rude to Grantaire and probably does things that roommates shouldn’t do such as accidently eat Grantaire’s sandwich that has left in the fridge and have his music on too loud, but Grantaire is still nice to him and now they are hugging. “Grantaire why are you nice to me?” Enjolras asks. 

“Because you are letting me,” Grantaire states as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. 

 

The answer is so simple, there has to be more to it than just that. He turns around in Grantaire’s embrace and faces Grantaire the best that he can. “Grantaire I am not a nice person to you or I try but I fail on a regular basis. But you are nice to me no matter how much I piss you off. There must be a real reason to this.”  
Grantaire sighs and closes his eyes. “I don’t know if I should tell you or not, because you might think that I am creepy and weird.”

“Grantaire, please just tell me.”

Grantaire sighs once more. “I like you.” He says simply. “I really like you, more than bacon.”

Enjolras feels his mouth go dry and he swallows. He can feel his chest tighten and his heart feels as if it is going to burst out of his chest. Grantaire likes him more than bacon, no one has ever told him that they like him more than smoked meat before, it is probably the most romantic thing someone has ever said to him. Maybe it is something that Grantaire is just saying because he feels bad for him and the fact that they are sharing a bed probably makes it a social protocol to say things like this. 

“I can understand if you think that I am weird and I can move out if you want and I can crash with Joly and Bossuet for the rest of the year.” Grantaire says.

“You don’t need to do that.” Enjolras says as he looks Grantaire right in the eyes. He was going to need to tell Grantaire this some time, screw it. “I like you more than blueberries. I have done for a really long time.”  
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Grantaire asks. 

“Because I am an idiot.” Enjolras says. “I really do like you, and I think that we could be good together, even though we fight a lot and I get upset over stupid things. You don’t have to, as if you are just saying this shit so I can feel better, we don’t need to do anything and I can go on looking like an idiot.” 

“Enjolras, just shut up.” Grantaire says fondly. “I think that we could be good together, I am not going to be the best boyfriend or whatever you call me, but I am going to try my best for you. Plus I find it cute that you actually care about the toaster and the brightness of the TV, as you are like the only person in the world who cares about them.”  
“That is all I want.” Enjolras says as he places a kiss on Grantaire’s cheek. “I would hug you more and that, but I just want to go to sleep.”

Grantaire doesn’t even reply back to him as he is fast asleep, and is already snoring loudly. When Enjolras thought that when he would confess his feelings if he ever would, he thought it would be like in the movies with candles and maybe even a row boat and fireworks. Instead of that he does it while he is half asleep and then Grantaire falls asleep on him. 

To be honest, Enjolras wouldn’t want it any other way.  
**

When Enjolras wakes up the next morning, the other side of the bed is empty. He doesn’t think much about it, as he is still in the wonderful land that it in-between dreams and reality, where even though he is awake, the world isn’t yet too real to him. Enjolras plods out of the bed that isn’t his and when he comes more to his full senses when his bare feet feel the coldness of the kitchen floor tiles, he is hit with the embarrassment from last night. Last night just seemed to go into a blur, with Grantaire and him in a bed, and just holding him while he told Grantaire about his parents and the fact that he had asked Grantaire to be with him and he had kissed Grantaire. It would probably have to be the most embarrassing few hours in Enjolras’s life. When he had woken up the next morning, he found that his bed was empty. Enjolras reckoned that Grantaire had probably pissed off when he realised how pathetic that he was that he got so upset over a simple family issue.

Grantaire is in the kitchen just covering some toast in a thick coating of jam while he is dressed in a horrendous dressing gown with his head bobbing along to some stupid Christmas song. Enjolras moves to the sofa and leans against the top just watching him and wondering how someone like Grantaire has come into life and put up would him for this long, and now they are what they are, and when he makes eye contact with Grantaire, that action alone makes his heart strings sting a little as they are doing the best to stop his heart from flying out of his body when he looks at Grantaire, he gives him the best smile that he can muster. He knows that it must be lacking in its usual confidence of some sort as within seconds Grantaire comes over to him and wraps his arms around his body. Enjolras rests his head against Grantaire’s shoulder and closes his eyes and he is wondering if Grantaire would be worried about his toast going cold, but Grantaire doesn’t seem to care about his breakfast. Enjolras tries to speak, but he can’t get the words to come out to tell Grantaire about his toast. Grantaire doesn’t say anything to him, but just hugs him. Maybe when you are in a relationship, hugs come before toast?

They stay like that for several minutes and when Enjolras is completely sure that Grantaire’s toast has reached the point of no return of actually being eaten, not unless Grantaire is a fan of Melba toast. Feuilly comes into the kitchen, and looks at them both with a look of confusion and pours himself a cup of coffee in the measuring jug, as someone, namely Grantaire had forgotten it was his turn to wash the dishes once more. He takes a sip and looks at the two of them again, looking slightly more awake. 

“So you two, are a thing now?” Feuilly asks slowly, clearly needing more coffee to help him process what is going on. He grabs the measuring jug that he is drinking out of and takes a swig out of it and narrowly avoids getting coffee on his pyjamas. Normally it would be Bossuet who would be the person who would discover the couples within their increasingly incestuous family, but Enjolras thinks that Feuilly is giving him a break. It is just Bossuet’s luck to discover couples and their goings on within the group. He walked into the store room of the Musian to put a broom away and he found Jehan and Courfeyrac in a compromising position, and Bossuet just walked out of the closet and whimpered into Joly’s shoulder for two hours before he could announce the couple. There was also the time when he walked into the laundry room in the apartment block to find a slack jawed Eponine and a giggling Cosette and Marius who was down on one knee with a ring in his hand. There was the time when He walked into the Musian when he found Musichetta and Joly confessing their love for another, and then he got dragged into the mix by Joly and it is probably the only time in his life that Bossuet has ever experienced the concept of good luck.

“Yes we are.” Grantaire says proudly before Enjolras can even open his mouth to reply. He looks at Grantaire and he sees many words about him to describe the position that Grantaire is in his life. Grantaire is his roommate, his friend, the bastard who has eats as if he has worms, and a lot more, but he had never though that boyfriend would be one. Maybe it showed that like everyone else, Enjolras himself could be human and could be loved.

“Do you want me to crash somewhere else now?” Feuilly asks, “as I can if you want me to, if you need to be alone.”

“You live here too Feuilly.” Enjolras says as he walks over to the kitchen island where Feuilly sitting at. “We are not going to make you homeless. Maybe if you tell people about this.” Enjolras says gesturing to himself and to Grantaire. “I don’t want to be the focus of gossip, that is Courfreyrac’s job and I am doubting that he is going to like me very much for stealing his job.”  
“Besides dude.” Grantaire says. “Who else in our small group of friends is going to teach me Kung fu? I don’t exactly see Prouvaire doing it, well it wouldn’t surprise me if he is part of your secret fight club. He likes to hang about with skulls, maybe the skull he speaks to, is the one guy he killed in fight club.  
“For the last time Grantaire, I am not part of fight club.” Feuilly says with a sigh of frustration. 

“That is the first rule of fight club, not to talk about Fight Club.” Grantaire says with a smirk.

“Grantaire, I am not in fight club.” Feuilly says in-between his teeth. “How many times do I need to tell you?”

“Maybe when you convince me that you are not in fight club.” Grantaire says, clearly taking too much enjoyment in harassing Feuilly. “I have seen you kick Bahorel’s ass in Mortal Combat.”  
“That is a video game!” Feuilly exclaims. “I just press random buttons as I have no bloody clue what I am doing!”

“Fight Club moves.” Grantaire says. “You just pretend to not know what you are doing, but secretly, you know how to whoop ass.”

“I am going to make some bacon.” Enjolras says, as he feels that he needs to celebrate and just so he cannot be involved in his stupid argument between his roommates…no actually, his boyfriend and his roommate. As he turns his back to face the stove and he hears Feuilly shouts of his denial about being in fight club, and Grantaire’s taunts, he smiles to himself as at the moment there is no place that he would rather be, even though that is cheesy as hell. Maybe it is all the Christmas music that he has been listening to , has just made him a little bit soppy and sentimental, dam that Christmas joy.  
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
As they are going to the orphanage, Feuilly seems to be excited about going, mostly due to the fact that he is bouncing in his seat. Normally people wouldn’t look forward to going to an orphanage from years of being told by their parents that they would go there if they keep misbehaving and they would have to eat spouts there all the time. Or they are just screwed up from watching Annie far too many times, (Grantaire is positive that is what happened to him,) but Feuilly seems to be genially happy going there. There is something about Feuilly that makes Grantaire feel a bit strange when he speaks to him. He doesn’t know what it is exactly, but if he had to really think about it, Grantaire would say it was the fact that he feels that speaking to Feuilly is speaking to the grandfather that you were rather scared of due to the fact they were strict and they seemed not to have a sense of humour. It is a massive problem for Grantaire, as he speaks mostly in sarcasm, and he feels that he can speak the way he normally does with Feuilly, as he is positive that Feuilly is going to lecture him on how to speak properly to adults and how he isn’t that funny. Grantaire is positive that his head is going to explode if he has to speak formally all the time.

It is not like he doesn’t like Feuilly, once you get past the fear factor that Feuilly has and the fact that the kid could rip out your kidneys with his bare hands if you pissed him off enough, and the idea that Feuilly probably knows like seven types of street karate and over one hundred ways to rip out someone’s balls or their boobs, (As Feuilly probably wouldn’t discriminate when he needs to kick ass.) and make them into earrings, Grantaire doesn’t mind Feuilly. In fact he rather likes Feuilly once he finds at least two different escape routes in whatever location he is, so that he can run away if Feuilly decides to go all whoop ass on him and decides to rip out his eyeballs and shove his fingers into the now empty eye sockets and pull out his testicles from the inside and drag them up to his body and put them in his eye sockets, just for the hell of it. Grantaire is positive that could only happen in cartoons, but he isn’t going to doubt Feuilly's ability to disfigure him. 

Well he doesn’t know Feuilly that well, mostly as he doesn’t really see him, with the combination of three jobs that Feuilly has and some other commitments that he lets himself get forced onto, as according to Combeferre, Feuilly can never say no to people. Grantaire is doubting this, because when he asked Feuilly for some combat training and if Feuilly was in fight club and if he could join the fight club, just really for the banter of it and the stories that he could tell his grandkids if he made it out of fight club alive and with his testicles intact. Feuilly only glared at him and told him to go to hell. It wasn’t a direct no, but Grantaire was positive that Feuilly did say no, mostly as each time he kept asking Feuilly about fight club, the boy ended up sending him various threats about how he was willing to kill Grantaire with just a pencil and Grantaire is positive that Feuilly probably has at least seventeen different ways he could do it. Maybe this was a part of Feuilly’s fight club training, as the first rule of fight club was not to talk about fight club. But the one thing that he knows about Feuilly that he has been told from Enjolras is that he really likes kids, Feuilly doesn’t look like the type of guy to be attached to kids in one way or another, he looks more like the type of guy who would nurse a beer rather than a kid. But he was the one to suggest going to the orphanage on Christmas day, and much to Grantaire’s delight, he was the one who suggested that they should dress up on their trip to the orphanage. 

“I really don’t like these tights.” Grantaire complains from the back of the car as he pulls a pair of red and green tights out of a plastic bag. “Why does Feuilly get to be Santa?”

Enjolras drums his fingers against the steering wheel and peers at Grantaire thought the mirror. “It is Feuilly’s idea and he is a ginger and the green doesn’t look good with his complexion, and the elf costume has orange on it. Do you want Feuilly to look like a carrot?”

“Plus I think that I look rather good with a beard.” Feuilly chimes in as he is practically bouncing on his seat. “I can’t grow one,” He says mournfully. “I tried before but it looks like I had a beard, but it died and it has come to haunt my chin.”

“Maybe you will get a beard one day, Feuilly.” Grantaire says, “If I can transfer my hair onto your body I would.” 

“I heard of organ donation, but hair donation is a new thing.” Enjolras says as he makes the final turn onto the orphanage.  
“It sounds kind of gross.” Feuilly shudders. 

“ It would depend where you got the hair from as well,” Grantaire says . “I reckon that I could give someone enough hair to last the rest of their life and that is just from my feet. I’m like a hobbit.”

Both Feuilly and Enjolras shudder at the same time and Grantaire only barks out a laugh. “Grantaire I know that we are together, but you are shaving your feet before we go to bed tonight.” Enjolras commands as he parks of the car.

“That is just gross.” Feuilly says as he basically throws himself out of the car the second that it stops, almost doing a bit of a ninja roll as he opens the door, and running into the orphanage without even waiting for Enjolras to even park.

Grantaire climbs over to the front seat and he pokes Enjolras’s side with a long finger, when Feuilly leaves the car. “Are you actually wanting me to shave my feet?” Grantaire asks, knowing that if Enjolras did say yes to his question, he would actually do it, hell, he would even wax his chest if Enjolras had wanted him to do it. He would do anything for Enjolras if it was to make him slightly happier, and moving the earth seems a bit impossible, so it is the next best thing for Enjolras. 

“It seems a bit stupid to do so.” Enjolras replies as he take off his seatbelt. “Your feet might get cold without your hair.”

“Enjolras, I am basically wearing a jumper with how hairy I am.” Grantaire replies. “I am like a mammoth.” 

“A cute one.” Enjolras says as he places a kiss on Grantaire’s crooked nose. 

Grantaire turns bright pink and he can feel his ears burn, ever since he was younger people always had to say something about his appearance, it was always negative about it. Well his mother used to tell him that he was beautiful, but Grantaire reckons thatwas just a bunch of lies, as she lied about the Easter bunny and Santa. And to have someone like Enjolras tell him something nice about his appearance, it is something that makes him smile. It genially does, he believes Enjolras, even though Enjolras believes in those stupid things such as world peace and saving the whales. 

“I didn’t know that mammoths could be cute.” Grantaire says with a smile forming.

“Well, it takes a special one to put up with someone like me for as long as you have.” Enjolras says as he places a chaste kiss on his cheek. “Come on, we need to do this thing for Feuilly or he is going to kill us.”  
The two of them make their way into the orphanage and as they go into the door , they are greeted with the sight of Feuilly being tackled to the ground by a group of kids who are trying to all hug him at the same time. You can see more children then Feuilly, as he is covered by them. Feuilly is laughing loudly and he is greeting each kid individually with a large smile on his face. It is the happiest that Grantaire has ever seen Feuilly. 

“Are you kids looking forward to be seeing Santa?” Feuilly asks the children, resulting in an echo of replies from the children, even the kids who look bored out of their minds look slightly intrigued by this. Grantaire knows that they are interested just for the presents as that it the meaning of Christmas these days, and not family and friends. 

“Why don’t you all go into the main room and wait for Santa?” Feuilly asks and within seconds the children go off Feuilly and they run into a room with a piano in, dragging the people in charge with him. Grantaire only shakes his head in amusement about how excited kids get over people who are fictional. 

“Do these tights make me look fat?” Grantaire asks as he looks at his appearance in the long mirror in the bathroom. He was right in the car, his legs do not look good in tights. He is thankful that they are dark coloured tights as his leg hair doesn’t show through the tights that much. He was willing to do that thing for Feuilly, but he wasn’t going to shave his legs for him and the kids. “I really don’t feel sexy like this.”

“You look fine Grantaire.” Enjolras says as he comes out of the toilet cubical wearing his own pair of tights with shoes with bells on them that jingle with each step that he takes and a stupid hat perched on his curls that is covered with bells. He looks terrible in this outfit, but Grantaire thinks that Enjolras can pull it off, but he could be looking at Enjolras with rose coloured lenses. “We are doing this for the kids.”

“I know, but I am too tall to be an elf.” Grantaire says as he puts on his stupid looking hat. 

“You could be one who was in an nuclear explosion and gained the ability to reach for things on selves.” Enjolras says smiling.  
“You are so fucking weird.” Grantaire barks out a laugh. “I thought that I would be used to this by now.”

“Well I thought that I would be used to your obsession with Glee.” Enjolras replies, “Why do you watch it?”

“I like the music.” Grantaire shrugs. “Plus Kurt is just a delight.”

“I was expecting more of a reason for it.” Enjolras says with a sigh of disappointment. “I was expecting a deep dark secret about it. You wanted to be on the show or something like that.”

“Are you ready yet?” Feuilly asks through the door. “There is a large crowd of children who are going to be annoyed if Santa doesn’t come within three seconds. James don’t look in the bag!”

“We should save Feuilly.” Grantaire sighs. “I just want to spend the rest of the time here with you.”

“I know but there are children.” Enjolras replies. “Come on, smile for the children. I like it when you smile.”

Grantaire puts on a smile, “Do I look better now?”

“Much better.” Enjolras says placing a kiss on Grantaire’s cheek.

 

“Who is the first to see Santa?” Enjolras asks as he looks at the crowd of kids, who seem to get even more excited than they were before and they start to jump up and down with excitement, and shouting and squealing their joys to see ‘Santa,’ or Feuilly with a fake beard and a red suit on. Feuilly is sitting on the arm chair in the middle of the room, looking slightly stupid as he the costume that he has got on is massive on him and he has tried to plump himself out. It is easy to tell that Feuilly has shoved a pillow under his shirt in the attempt to get the Santa pudge that the man in red is famous for, due to the fact that Feuilly’s stomach looks square. 

Grantaire forces his eyes to move from Enjolras as moves his focus to the crowd of children and he scans it to find someone to go and see Santa first. 

“Do you want to see Santa?” He asks a girl at the back of the crowd with long pigtails at either side of her head, and a teddy bear clutched into her hand that is hanging dangerously to the ground.  
“He looks scary.” She says.

“Feu-Santa, is a very nice man.” Grantaire says in the kindest voice he can muster. “He gives us elves more than the minimum wage, that is a great thing in this economy and he gives us paid breaks as well.”

“But you don’t need to know about that.” Feuilly calls over, throwing a teddy bear at Grantaire’s head. “I think the more important question is if you have been a good girl or not?”  
The girl makes no move to go and run towards Feuilly, instead she clutches onto Grantaire’s leg. The older children make their noises of displeasure and they grumble loudly about not getting their turn with Santa. 

“How about we can go and sit up on Santa’s lap together?” Grantaire suggests, shaking his head about how weird his sentence sounds in his head, it is a sentence that he never thought that he would say in his life. “I will be with you the whole time.”

The girl nods but she still looks a bit hesitant. “I can make sure that Santa gives you a really nice present.” Grantaire says reaching out for her hand, she grabs it and they make their way onto the middle of the room.

“I’m really sorry man.” Grantaire says before he sits down on Feuilly’s lap, knowing that he is heavier than the average child and it doesn’t help that Feuilly could probably snap in half if he tried to get Feuilly to give him a piggy back ride. He feels kind of bad for Feuilly, but he doesn’t at the same time, as Feuilly gets to wear a cool beard and he doesn’t have to wear tights. The lucky bastard. Enjolras is standing in the back with all of the other children just watching the two of them in confusion as when does an elf ever sit on Santa’s lap? Maybe the ones who are trying to get in to Santa’s trousers, but that is the only reason that Grantaire can think of at the moment. He might spend some time on it later. He pulls the girl onto his knee and he can see one of the managers taking photos of this scene. He could tell that Enjolras would be doing the same, but he left his phone in the jeans pocket as there are no pockets in the elf costume and keeping his phone in his tights was a bit stupid.

“What is your name little girl, and Mr Elf?” Feuilly asks in his deep ‘Santa voice,’ that is only several octaves lower than his normal voice. Feuilly coughs a bit after he speaks as his voice is deeper that he is used to, but he covers the cough with making the Santa call. 

“My name is Alice,” The girl says quietly.

“My name is Sandy the elf.” Grantaire says in his happiest voice that he can muster in this situation. Grantaire can hear Enjolras snort in laughter. He turns his head around and he sees Enjolras sitting on the ground with a group of children trying to sit on his lap and take off his hat. Enjolras is rather happy to let the children take off his hat and he encourages the children to play with the hat and put it on, so that he doesn’t have to wear it. 

“What would you like for Christmas?” Feuilly asks. 

Alice doesn’t say anything for a few moments before she whispers into Grantaire’s ear. Grantaire nods with an air understanding before he speaks up. “Alice is wondering if she can be a Princess for Christmas.”

He moves his eyes so that he is now looking at Enjolras. The face that Enjolras is making is just purely comical at the moment, with his mouth wide open and eyes wide as he is totally against children wanting to become members of royalty. He is just against royalty in general. Grantaire bites his tongue in the attempt to prevent himself from laughing out loud as it is just cruel to laugh at a child’s hopes and dreams. 

“I think that you have been really good girl this year, and I think that I might be able to make that happen.” Feuilly says as he makes Grantaire stand up so that he can go into his Santa sack and he pulls out a present for Alice. She starts to rip at the paper straight away and she pulls out a tiara and puts it on her head straight away, in her hurry to put it on her head, it goes crooked, but Alice doesn't looks if she cares. She looks so happy and Grantaire is positive that his heart just melted a little bit.

“Sandy?” Alice asks tugging on Grantaire’s sleeve a little bit as the next child starts to make their way onto Santa’s lap. “You didn’t ask for a present from Santa, have you been bad?” 

“No, I haven’t.” Grantaire replies shaking his head. “I think that I have been a rather good elf this year. I have got what I wanted for Christmas already.”

“What did you get?” She asks sitting on Grantaire’s lap once they get back to the floor with the other children. “Was it a really cool present?”

“Yeah it was.” Grantaire replies. “You see the other elf there.” He says pointing into Enjolras’s direction. “He came into my life and I have been really happy ever since. We didn’t like each other very much at the start, but we are happy now. Very happy.”

“He is very pretty.” Alice says, adjusting her tiara to stop it falling down. “He looks a bit boring.”

“He can be at times.” Grantaire whispers. “But sometimes you need to get past that and then you find that someone is a very funny and interesting person.” 

“Do you think that he has been a good elf this year to get you?” She asks. 

“I really hope so.” Grantaire replies as he looks out of the window and notices the first few flakes of snow falling down. “Oh, look it is snowing!” Grantaire points out as he looks over at Enjolras and smiles at him. Maybe Grantaire himself was a very good elf this year, but Grantaire had no idea on how he managed to do it, but he is not complaining.  
*  
“And this is why we say that Napoleon was a bad man.” Enjolras says over his cup of imaginary tea. “Does anyone have any questions?”

“Enj, it is time to go home.” Feuilly says looking a bit reluctant to go. He is covered in feathers and there is purple paint and glitter in his hair with a large pile of paintings and drawing in his hands. Even though he is in a mess, Feuilly looks happy though. Feuilly is always happy when he comes back from an orphanage, actually Feuilly is just a pretty happy guy most of the time, it is something that Grantaire admires about Feuilly and the fact that he can probably destroy someone in a hundred ways just using a pencil, as Feuilly is just that bad ass. . 

“But I am teaching the children the problems of the monarchy.” Enjolras whines slamming his cup down on the little plastic table that he is sitting at. “They need to know about how Napoleon savaged France.”

“Enjy, come one it is time to go home.” Grantaire says taking a sneaky photo of Enjolras sitting on a tiny seat with wearing a tutu and fairy wings with a crown, waving a magic wand about passionately as he talks about Napoleon. 

“But I don’t want to,” Enjolras whines. “I am educating children about what not to do if they ever decide to ravage a country.”

“You can come back with me at another time.” Feuilly says. “But these kids need to get dinner and head off to bed.”

“Fine,” Enjolras sighs as he stands up, throwing his tiara on the ground. He turns to the children at the table with him. “When I come back, we will talk about the monarchy and the French Revolution. I will even bring my books with me.”

“Okay, Mr Oranges.” The children say all at once, if it wasn’t so cute, Grantaire would be worried. Grantaire and Feuilly let out a snort when they hear the children try and say Enjolras’s name. The children couldn’t pronounce his name and Mr Oranges was the closet name they could manage, and Enjolras didn’t even bother correcting them.  
“Don’t forget what we have learned today.” Enjolras says as he stands up to leave for the door, still wearing his tutu and fairy wings. “If you are going to savage a country-“  
“Do it properly and not get the king involved.” The children finish off. Enjolras turns around to him and he has a look of pride in his eyes that Grantaire hasn’t seen before. Teaching the children how to be radical members of society is something that is probably frowned upon in society and it makes Grantaire roll his eyes, but just because it is nearly Christmas he is going to let it slide, plus he is also impressed how children are taking Enjolras seriously while he is wearing a pair of fairy wings.  
As Grantaire is about to leave the building, little Alice comes running up to him, still with her tiara on and her bear clutched into her hand. She throws herself at him and Grantaire catches her with good skills. “Mr R, I hope that you make Mr Oranges a very happy man.” She says. “You have to do what I say because I am a princess.”  
“I will try my best, your highness.” Grantaire says putting her down and doing an exaggerated bow. 

“Good.” Alice says adjusting her tiara once more. “Will you come back?”

“Of course I would Princess Alice.”

She goes up to Grantaire and places a single kiss on his cheek and then turns away to go back to her tea party. Grantaire lets out a chuckle, feeling slightly warmer than he has done in a while. He goes up to Enjolras and puts a hand around his waist. “You look good in wings.” He says. 

“I know I do.” Enjolras simply says, as he gives one finial wave to the children before they leave the orphanage to go home to their small, crappy apartment with Feuilly and watch cheesy holiday films and just not care about the world around them, and eventually see the rest of their friends and spend the rest of the term in the Musian drinking the worst hot chocolate in the world and just being happy. 

As long as he has all of those things, Grantaire can’t complain and that is the first for him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Les Miserables ReverseBang 2015 for the lovely Plgeons:( http //p1geons.tumblr.com/) who drew a lovely picture that I wrote this story on. Just to appologise if it isn't the best story out there as I have spent so much time on it, that my eyes feel as if they havn't closed in ten years with the amount of staring at a screen I have done. Thank you for reading.


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